“How sweet are your words
to my taste; sweeter than
honey to my mouth!” Ps. 119
“Who dares to teach must
never cease to learn.”
John Cotton Dana
When we were in our early teens, it was expected that we attend regular Tuesday night catechism classes so that we could receive a good training in foundational beliefs. In retrospect, the church leaders who taught these classes deserve a lot of appreciation for giving of their time and energy. For myself and my sisters, this meant the opportunity to buy candy at the nearby corner variety store, which considerably sweetened our learning on those nights. Country living didn’t offer such amenities! Looking back, I wonder if this association reinforced learning and helped us to retain important truths.
Learning has continued to sweeten my life: ancient wisdom and new technology, old hymns and modern choruses, poetry and science, fiction and biography. And, when it was my turn to teach, the learning continued. Children could enlighten and amuse with their simple perspectives, as they did one Sunday morning in my Grade 5/6 class:
Boy: “Girls cause most of the problems in the world. It’s all because of Eve.”
(Girls are taken aback, but only temporarily.)
Girl: “Well, the snake was a boy.”
A new twist to the old blame game!
Albert Einstein once wrote to the young daughter of a friend “Study and, in general, the pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.”
We can take in instruction with the wide-eyed wonder of a child. And, like the psalmist, we can taste and see that God is good.
