Psalm 119:99 – Teachers

I have more understanding than all my teachers,
for your testimonies are my meditation.

It’s nice to do a meditation based on a text about meditation!

The advantage and disadvantage of a meditation, as opposed to exegesis of a passage is that your meditation can lead you in a direction other than what the writer was intending. I did that today. I meditated about teaching.

The first question that crossed my mind was how could I, as a teacher, keep my students from deciding they are wiser than I am since they meditate on God’s testimonies. An immediate answer came to mind. If I, as a teacher, am meditating on God’s testimonies, doesn’t that keep me ahead?

It wasn’t long, however, before I was asking myself whether I should be concerned if my students were, or become, wiser than I am. And there’s an immediate answer to that. If I’m worried about my students getting ahead of me in any way, I have the wrong attitude. I should be delighted if any student of mine is wiser than I am or learns more about the subjects I teach than I know.

Some years ago my nephew introduced me to someone as “the person who taught him how to program.” That’s true in only a most minor sense. I helped him with a few things when he was just starting out. He’s now a senior software engineer at Google and knows things in depth that I have no understanding of at all. And I’m very, very proud of him.

The possibility of seeding some small thing into the life of a student and then seeing that student reach heights the teacher has not imagined is, I believe, as great a joy as any teacher can have.

Now there are those, especially in religion and theology, who think the task of a teacher is to make sure the student stays on the straight and narrow way. The student must learn to believe the same things and teach the same things as the teacher, or the teacher has failed. If that is the goal, then the Psalm 119:99 student would mark failure, and the teacher would forever have to deny the insights of the student.

I was to teach at a conference on prayer many years ago. I expected to have an hour, and I had a good hour’s worth of notes. Those who know me will realize that I only use notes to keep myself on the program. If I don’t use notes, I can easily fill an hour, and then the next, and so forth. Notes are, for me, a necessary discipline, telling me when to shut up!

In this case, previous speakers kept pushing things later and later, and I realized that unless I wanted to keep people from their lunch, which the conference leader would doubtless not allow, I’d have less time. I kept hearing the nudge of the Holy Spirit: “Let me do the teaching.” So I chopped my notes down to size, and given a half hour, I took 20 minutes. Again, those who know me, will realize the miraculous nature of this self-restraint!

Following that session I was approached by one pastor. I won’t go into the details, but that contact became one of the most encouraging and helpful contacts of my life. I’m pretty certain it wouldn’t have happened if I had been my normal wordy self. And I would definitely say that pastor, my student for 20 minutes, has more understanding than at least this teacher.

Who can you encourage today to go beyond your example, your teaching, or even your imagination?

(Featured image credit: Jovanmandic, licensed via iStockPhoto.com)