Skip the lectures

“To this they replied, “You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!” And they threw him out.” John 9: 34 NIV

Have you ever thought it would be fun to retake some of the classes you took when you were in school? History, for example, is far more interesting to me now than when I was in high school. I should have paid more attention to my Economics teacher as well. She used to pronounce “Fiscal” as “Physical”. It made the lectures funny. We spent too much time re-arranging the letters on her bulletin board to see how long it took her to notice the four letter words we made.

When I was in college, I took a class called “Human Growth and Development”. Fascinating topic, situationally unfortunate. I had just started my job at UPS, so I was getting up at 4:00 AM or earlier and working before spending the day in class. That class, in particular, hit at just the wrong time, mid-morning.

I slept through it for a week or two. I’m not talking about sleeping in my apartment while missing class. No. I showed up for class. I just couldn’t stay awake through it. The instructor seemed to be offended by my snoring, so I went to his office to explain my situation. I did not want to be rude, so I told him as long as he stuck to the dates on the syllabus, I would turn in research papers on time and show up for tests – no lectures needed. I remember he sort of laughed at the idea of missing the lectures and still passing. With no points deducted for not attending class, I think I ended the semester with around a 95% or something like that.

Around 20 years later I found myself speaking to a service club in town and saw him in the crowd. Afterwards I was a little embarrassed but introduced myself and reminded him that I was one of his former students. He said, “Oh I remember, you didn’t think you needed to grace me with your presence for the lectures.” True story. I still feel bad.

If you have been around my family lately, you know that a granddaughter has graced us with her presence. She is so beautiful. Our daughter is almost radioactive she looks so happy. Holding her you remember just how helpless a newborn is. Parents have a lot of things to teach a new human. I marvel at the fact that in a span of just 24 years our helpless little newborn daughter has grown up and made another person. Time will go just as fast for them.

It sounds weird but I have a theory that a parent’s job is to have their kids ready to leave home the day before they do. Otherwise, they are not ready for the journey. To get there, some lessons have to be taught on purpose. A lot of lessons are taught on the fly as life happens.

Aly had an attention span that could be politely described as short. You could have your best lecture ready. She may have deserved it, but about 8 seconds in, her eyes went glassy. I may have kept talking, but the teachable moment was over. She was teachable, but our format had to be adjusted. She disciplined herself quite often. We would walk into the room, and she would hand us her phone or her computer or whatever was appropriate and proceed to explain. True story, but there were many times we had no idea she had done anything wrong, and she would confess, apologize, and impose an appropriate punishment. She was actually a pretty good parent in middle school.

Do you ever wonder how your kids turned out so well in spite of you? We had no idea what we were doing when we became parents. Why does much of our wisdom come after the primary need for it?

I realize it now, but for many of the lessons my parents tried to teach me I was not ready to listen at the time. If I could go back and go through it again, I would have had more wisdom – sooner.

Challenge: Pick your lessons but be flexible in what method you use to teach them. We miss many opportunities by thinking the lecture is necessary.

Rick Claiborn