It has been a month since I last posted to the blog. Part of that is due to the time commitment of a new academic year and the start of the semester activities, but only part. The main reason is that I am fully into a period of time I will call my "off year". This is a season of life where I am not spending a 50 minute lecture enlightening students with the many factors involved in interpreting a single quotation of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel or soaking in their gleanings from reading aloud (many for the first time) an entire book of the prophets. This is a season of life when I take students from kindergarten through middle school in their understanding of the Greek language and the information needed to truly begin to interpret Scripture. It is a Greek Year.
I do like my off years. Day by day, week by week, month by month I introduce new material and ask students to look back two weeks into their past and realize what they have learned. Off years are filled with constant recognition of 'new' learning. Yet as the off year drags on and moves toward its scheduled finality, the newness wears off. The gain increase of knowledge relative to the already received repertoire decreases, motivation decreases proportionally to devote the necessary "one hour per day" to make incremental changes.
Maybe we need more "off time". When we depart from our regular schedule, with our time consumed by preferential, self rewarding activities, we have an imposed period of helping someone learn what they did not already know or were too scared to begin. By stepping into an 'off year' we begin to focus on imparting knowledge to others with none in that field. By forcing ourselves to approach the truly ignorant, but also truly innocent we are reminded of what is truly foundational, we must learn to rollover, to crawl, to stand, to walk, and even then--to fall and get up again!
This blog seems to be about school and its changing paces, but it is not. We need "off years" in our Christian faith and activities. We begin this new life with such rapid growth we scarce can keep up, but then the rate of growth eventually slows and we sense we are getting nowhere fast. We are unwilling to provide the discipline to painfully add to our knowledge of God and His kingdom in the small incremental ways necessary. We reach the painful, yet all too often subconscious, decision that enough is enough. I know enough about God to last my lifetime. I know enough about God to use the knowledge for what I need. I have learned enough about God already that I outdo my peers. When is enough enough? never!
We need the off years to go back to the basics and help others learn; we need the off years to teach and challenge us to learn more; we need the off years to remind us what we have forgotten-the light bulbs and energy of gaining new insights! We need the off years to remind us that it is not and never truly has been about US.
Schedule an "off year" soon! It is the only way they can be experienced.
