Unrealized Expectations

Sunday 11/24/2013 6:29 AM

A little over sixteen years ago I began teaching at Cerritos College.  Previous to that I taught twenty-one years at Valley Christian High School.  When I began teaching at Cerritos I envisioned being able to share my Christian faith with my students, allowing them to share in the great joy of living life in an intimate relationship with God and within a supportive, Christian community.  Many people in the world today, including many of my students, live their lives apart from God, rejected by their family and isolated from others.  I long for them to experience life the way that it is meant to be lived but I do not know how best to accomplish that in my role as a math teacher.

When I first began teaching at Cerritos I felt as if God told me to simply be the best math teacher that I could be.  I felt as if I needed to establish myself on the campus as respectable teacher and colleague to gain credibility with my students and peers.  My thought was that after a couple of years students and colleagues alike would see that I was different and become curious.  Well that never happened.

My devotional theme for the week has been charity, or in modern language, love.  The first characteristic of love that is mentioned in 1 Corinthians 13 is that love is patient.  I have been patient for sixteen years but I’m not sure how much longer I can afford to be so.  Next week I will celebrate my fifty-eighth birthday and, if the Lord is gracious, I will only be teaching for another eight to ten years.  If I am to have a positive effect on my student’s and on my colleague’s lives it has to be soon or it will be too late.

Today I read an excerpt from With Open Heart by Michael Quoist that I found quite convicting.  “There have been times when I have waited months, and even years, at someone’s door.  You can’t force your way into a house ­– it would be breaking and entering.  You must simply be there, like warm sunlight, so that seeing you through the window, the other will want to come out.  You must imitate God’s unwavering patience with his children, whom he loves.  … But if the other hesitates too long to come out of his fortress, perhaps it is because my light is weak, so weak that it cannot illuminate the way.”

I have spent the last sixteen years quietly waiting outside the house, hoping the light of my life would entice others to come out and join me.  This morning I am wondering if others view my life as a guttering candle rather than a roaring fire.  I need to make sure I am not quenching the fire that the Holy Spirit is trying to stoke.