THE RIGHT TIME
September 13, 2018
Prayer: Lord, thank You for sending Your Holy Spirit to lead us in wisdom. Please help us to always know when You want us to speak up.
Scripture: But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.
Matthew 13:23 NIV
When is it time to put differences aside for the sake of unity versus standing up for the unpopular? This week in the teacher’s lounge I was outnumbered. It is not a matter of caring whether or not people agree with me. But we are to be bearers of truth. So when is it demanded of us not to be silent, but to speak the truth in love? Let’s take this morning in history class. When the history teacher was saying, “We’re evolved from apes,” I, as the special education teacher in the class, was taking in the information along with the students, to be able to help them study later. Was that a speak-the-truth moment? Was I to stand and speak out against the idiotic lie of that statement?
Or is it better to wait for a private moment to speak to the teacher alone? I had a great experience a few years ago when I was in the science class with a brilliant science educator. I used this approach. “Do you mind if I purchase a set of The Creation Trilogy and place it in this classroom for students to be able to pick up?” She was delighted and asked if she could please read them first. She took the three books home, devoured them, and shared them with her husband and her extended family. As a result, she and her husband turned their lives over to Christ, joined a church, and made Jesus the center of their lives!
What an opportunity to be able to affect, not only the lives of students, but the lives of their teachers as we stay faithful in the public schools. I pray for us to be sensitive to know the right timing and the right circumstances so that the truth will be planted into fertile soil.
Copyright Cheryl Skid. Email [email protected]