Many years ago, I was a professor in a small college back home in Tennessee ... I taught English and Spanish, and I loved, loved, loved that job. I especially loved teaching English, and I had a real soft spot in my heart for the students in my remedial English classes. The thing I loved most about those particular students ... students of all ages and from all kinds of different backgrounds and places in life ... was that they were in those classes because they desperately wanted to learn how to read and write the English language. They weren't there simply to fulfill a requirement set by the school or to please their parents or spouses or friends or anyone else ... they were there because they wanted to learn. Two of those students meant a ton to me then, and they still stand out in my mind to this day all these years later.
One was a young man who had suffered a severe head injury in a farming accident which caused him to have to relearn everything ... how to walk, eat, speak, read, write and all the other things each of us do every day without a second thought. The other was a 66-year-old gentleman who had operated a mail sorting machine at the post office for his entire working life. It took those two men the entire year and countless extra hours of help from me, but by the end of the year-long class, both of them could read and write. I received Christmas cards from the older fellow every year until he passed away, and the young man would often drop by my class when I was teaching just to say hello. I loved that job not because of my salary or my position or any other superficial reason ... I loved that job because I had a front row seat to see the light sparkle in the eyes of folks like those two men when they finally "got it" and learned the lesson I was trying to teach them.
As I've mentioned before, my morning bike rides now take place in total darkness as the daylight hours get shorter and shorter with the approach of the fall and winter seasons. I ride the same route each morning, and each morning for the last couple of weeks, I've noticed a man and woman running and biking on the trail. This morning as I reached the spot where I always see them, I noticed that they had stopped on the side of the road and the man had gotten off of his bike and was massaging the girl's calf muscle. Thinking perhaps she was injured, I pulled over and asked if they needed any help ... yeah, yeah, I know what some of you are going to say ... stopping and talking to strangers in the dark isn't too smart. And my reply is yep, I know that, but this morning I stopped anyway. Turned out that the girl had a cramp in her leg, and her dad was trying to get the muscle to relax so that his daughter didn't have to endure the pain and could continue her morning run.
Standing together in the darkness chatting, the father told me about their daily workouts. The girl is training for a marathon, and the dad rides in front of her on his bike with two lights ... a light in the front so that he can see the path before him, and a light in the back so that his daughter can see where to run. Climbing back on my bike, I couldn't help but ask how long she had been training, and I was very surprised when she said she and her dad had been running and riding on the trail together for over six months. The father said he rode with his daughter when it was light outside to keep her company and help her to not become distracted by all the people and things she saw, and he rode with her in the darkness to protect her and help her find her way on the path she couldn't see. Six months the two have been on the path together, and I hadn't noticed them at all ... I hadn't noticed them at all until the darkness fell.
Sometimes I wonder if God sits on His throne and shakes His head at how long it takes the sparkle to appear in my eyes when I finally "get it" ... when I finally understand the lesson He is trying so desperately to teach me. Just yesterday at church, the preacher talked about how light shines brighter in the night, about how the darker the night is, the brighter the light will shine, about light being light no matter where it is, but that it is brightest when surrounded by darkness. The minister's words yesterday, the words I penned last night, the words of the father and daughter this morning. I'd say that God has a huge lesson he wants me to learn about darkness and light ... a lesson about following Him in the light of day or the dark of night ... a lesson about trusting Him to always light my way. And I think since He's chosen three different avenues to put it before me ... I think I need to listen ... I think I need to listen in a great big old huge way.
"Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path." Psalm 119:105
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