I couldn’t believe it. It was my first year teaching regular English after over ten years teaching emotionally disturbed and at-risk youth, and this student was worse than all of them. His number one goal each day was to hijack my class: get everyone to get up and sharpen their pencils at the same time, anything to keep everyone focused on him and his game instead of what I was teaching. He finally had to be removed from my class for the last two weeks of the semester.
At the time, I was relieved. He was a sophomore, and I only taught 9th and 10th grade. I would not have to teach him again. Period. Little did I know, his father was a friend of my husband’s who tragically took his own life just a year later, leaving two children and wife to deal with the aftermath. And our relationship changed. We didn’t communicate a lot, but this defiant 16 year-old became a humble and mature 18 year-old we checked in on and chatted with when we saw him in the community.
As a young teacher, it is easy to get stuck in “short game” thinking. Nine months and change: that is how long I have to deal with that one student who hates school, rubs me the wrong way, etc. . . . But after over twenty-five years in the classroom, I have learned that the “short game” is a fallacy. Now that I have taught in my hometown for this long, and in the same district and school as my own children, I no longer think in terms of “making it through the school year” with certain students. The students in my classroom are my community. I may teach them again in a year or two, I may teach their siblings or cousins, and if I check, I may have grown up with their parents. In fact, after a close friend from church adopted one of my former students, our family has also been blessed to share our home this year with someone I used to teach.
I don’t know about you, but my life is busy. And even though my children are older now, I still tend to be very task-oriented, consumed by “short game” thinking. Grading essays, completing required training, cleaning the house, attending cross-country meets and orchestra concerts. I tend to live my life one task at a time. The truth is, while God gives us “all things that pertain to life and godliness” (1 Peter 1:2), he is more interested in the “long game” than the mundane daily tasks of our lives.
He alone knows which people we will meet once, and those we will establish a life-long connection. So, while we count the days until our next vacation, David describes God’s perspective as “a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night” (Psalm 90:4). His game is so long, in fact, that fairly well-intentioned people like me are so easily side-tracked and are shocked to find out he hasn’t quit playing it while we are busy with “our” lives.
Even the disciples had a difficult time seeing God’s plan. Even though they had been told of his death and resurrection several times, they were shocked when it actually happened. The subtitle before Luke 18:31 says Jesus Predicts His Death a Third Time precedes such statements as “He will be delivered over to the gentiles . . . they will flog him and kill him. On the third day he will rise again” (Luke 18:32). When he found them reclining and eating, living in complete denial of the resurrection even after he had appeared to two of them who had “reported it to the rest”, he “rebuked them for their lack of faith” (Mark 16:13-14). They had been told what was going to happen, but just like us, their finite minds could not comprehend God’s long term goal.
Living in the “long game” is not in our DNA. We don’t know what God has planned, so we act as if getting through the work week or a sports season is our most important assignment. Most of us require constant reminders from God’s word and friends in the faith to remember that our daily plans are but a “mist” (James 4:13), a mere drop in the ocean of your divine plan for eternity.
Lord, teach us to “number our days” (Psalm 90:12). Remind us daily to treat each task or encounter as a divine appointment, one that you may use in ways we can’t even imagine.
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