Presbytery of Middle Tennessee 615.778.0500 home page
Contact Us previous page page down next page
Education - 8/9 /05 2005 Archive - 2006 Archive

A recent Sunday School class for junior high and senior high students resulted in stickers which had an image of a graduate’s mortar board & tassel, a Bible, and the phrase “Two years and praying.” (Or the appropriate number of years until a particular student’s graduation from high school.) I was given such a sticker to wear from my eleventh grader. It reminded me that I needed to be “praying” as well as “counting.” It also reminded me that the value of secondary education is not always as apparent to adolescents as it is to their parents.

As an adolescent, you may find it difficult to pay much attention to your education. Your social life may appear to be much more important, and you may ignore the former in favor of a heaping dose of the latter. What you may not know is this: Secondary school curriculum is the grocery list of the basic ingredients for all of the recipes that you will ever make of and with your life. This even includes geometry.

Ten years from now, when you begin to recognize the particular kind of vocation that will both bring you great joy and allow you to serve others, you will look back on the list of academic ingredients that you mastered. These will be highlighted and bold, and are available for you to use. The ingredients that you blew off– the ones you decided were unnecessary to learn, or that you only studied enough to squeak by– will be backlit and unavailable for your use. You will then have to choose, if it is still possible, to put your dreams on hold while you go back and learn the basic ingredients you need, or to settle for a less satisfying recipe that fits the limited ingredient list you have.

The choice is yours. It begins now. Will you have the freedom to “kick it up a notch”? Or will you have to settle for bland fare?

© 2005 Todd Jenkins