The Scripture: I Thessalonians 4:13-18
Hopeless Education
It’s the Monday after spring break, and students are asking about grades and dropping or staying accordingly. What they’re really asking me is if there’s hope for them to pass the class they’re taking.
I’ve heard more negative self-talk this semester than any other in my full-time teaching career. It’s normal for students to complain about hard an English course is or to articulate their inability to understand a particular reading assignment. What’s odd is how vehemently my students have insisted that they cannot write well and this will never change. They have no faith the class will help them. They were betrayed by poor high school teachers and sabotaged by instructors, and now their case is hopeless.
“I can’t learn.” “I’ll never get this.” “Why do I even bother?”
This is simply untrue.
Every student can improve, at least a little, over the course of a semester. I’ve seen it happen too many times.
Hopeful Believers
During this Lenten season as we prepare to celebrate Christ’s resurrection, we find ourselves in between a desire for the resurrection and the pain that comes with knowing Christ must die for our sins before that can happen. When the disciples miss out on Christ’s predictions of his resurrection, they are guaranteeing heartbreak on Good Friday.
How many believers in the Messiah wavered in their faith in between Christ’s death and resurrection?
We know that even the disciples who knew him best doubted.
Writing now more than 2000 years after the event, the two days seem insignificant, but they are where we live when we lose hope in Christ.
Paul encourages those mourning the death of loved ones by appealing to Christ’s resurrection. It’s the belief that Christ rose again that gives the Christian hope.
Conclusion
I can offer my students educational reasons for sticking the course out, but perhaps the best reason to continue to see your own flagging skills as redeemable is the fact that it will give them a tangible lesson for what hope feels like. And I pray that experience of hope points them to the one who made our eternal hope possible.