Tomorrow morning our 8th graders will be graduating from middle school.  Since ours is a K-8 school, we are truly sending them forth outside our gates and influence to brave the very different world of high school.  This parting will be particularly poignant for me since I have forged a very strong bond with our 8th graders this year, being their homeroom, math, science, and logic teacher.  In short, we spend a lot of time together.  We have become very much a family, with both all the annoying and all the sacred connotations therein.

For the first time in my six years of teaching, I have been asked to give the parting words to our graduates.  My students will tell you that their time in my class is not without the occasional (read: often) “talk about life,” which they know is coming whenever I pull out “the stool.”  I have found that the longer I teach the more things I feel like I have to say to my students that have nothing to do with “what we have to cover.”  It is almost a feeling of urgency sometimes, as if I want to spare them from something or dispel all the lies of the world or somehow propel them to a state of wisdom that only and necessarily comes through walking on their own feet in Jesus’ wake with their eyes fixed on scripture and their ears trained to the whispers of the Holy Spirit.

So all week I have been viewing my talk tomorrow as the ultimate “stool talk,” my last chance to prick their hearts with God’s truth, my last opportunity to save them from the evils of the world.

Yes, I want to save them.  I want to protect them.  I want to hold them in my arms and shield them from all that the enemy has to offer.

If only I can choose the perfect scripture, read the best C.S. Lewis quote, say just the right thing – then, THEN, they will be okay.  THEN I can send them forth with confidence.

And then God whispers into my heart, “I have them; let them go.”

In the world of education, we rightly place extreme gravity on what we do as teachers, especially if we are involved in “Christ-centered” education.  James 3 among other places in scripture suggest that great is our responsibility if we choose to teach.  And if you have ever been a teacher in one of those moments when you have every student hanging on your next word, or perhaps you notice that some of your students are starting to imitate you, or one day you realize that they remember a lot more about what you have said than you do – it hits you all of a sudden just how much power and influence you wield behind that classroom door.

And if you’re not careful, you can begin to think that you have too much to do with who they become, or you focus so much on techniques or modes or methods or ideals, or you start a blog in order to discern what true education really means, and before you know it you have supplanted that very thing that you are trying to instill in the hearts of your students in the first place: trust in God.

As someone once said to me, “Either God is sovereign or He is not.”

Or, as Paul said in Philippians 1:4-6: “In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”

Yes, my work as a teacher is very important.  But it is not me but God in me who works, and it is He who will continue that work.  Thank you, Lord Jesus.

Maybe instead of crafting just the right words to say to my graduates I just need to get down on my knees and pray Paul’s prayer from Philippians – and trust in the sovereign work of the Lord.

Oh Sovereign Lord, I prepare now to send forth these graduates confident not in the fact that I have done all I can to prepare them, but confident that you have and will continue to perform a good work in their hearts, carrying it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

Thank you, Jesus.  Amen.