Learning Curve

      On his very first day of school, little Johnny handed the teacher a note from his mother. It read, “The opinions expressed by this child are not necessarily those of his parent’s.” At the end of her first week of school, little Suzy expressed her thoughts to her mother, “I’m just wasting my time”, she said. “I can’t read, I can’t write, and they won’t let me talk!” Well, just through my personal observations and experiences, I’ve come to the conclusion that all of us have some sort of learning disorder. It’s probably because we learn in different ways and generally feel we can never learn all there is to know about any one subject. Some people are visual learners; they think in pictures and need visual aides. Others are auditory learners; they learn through listening; lectures, discussions and such. Then there are tactile/kinesthetic learners; those who learn through experience. I seem to be a bit of each of these learning profiles which may explain my across-the-board, ho-hum attitude toward life and living. I’ve never centered my thoughts on much of anything in particular but enjoy learning a little bit about everything. I tear things apart to discover what makes them tic and fixing something generally makes my day. Math and English have never really turned me on, but I use them to my advantage every day. Isn’t it amazing how a little food can mature the body in less than twenty-five years, but it takes more than a lifetime to mature the brain to the point of self-satisfaction? Although I’m diametric toward the electronic age, mainly because I don’t understand most of it, I find myself, as did my ancestors at the changes of every century, kicking and screaming while being dragged into the quagmire of ones and zeros. I guess maybe it’s because everything is operating at the speed of nanoseconds and I’m expected to do the same. Well, I don’t use a typewriter.


       [Ephesians 4: 11-15] The Sunday school class was asked if they knew why Elijah poured water over the sacrificial steer on the altar. A little girl piped up, “I know! I know! To make the gravy!” A churchgoer wrote a letter to the editor of a newspaper complaining that it made no sense to go to church every Sunday. “I’ve gone for thirty years now,” he wrote, “and in that time I have heard about 3,000 sermons. But, for the life of me, I can’t remember a single one of them. So, I think I’m wasting my time and the preachers are wasting theirs by preaching at all.” A reply to that ‘Letter to the Editor’ read: “I’ve been married for thirty years now. In that time, my wife has cooked some 32,000 meals. But, for the life of me, I can’t remember the entire menu of a single one of those meals. Yet I do know this. They all nourished me and gave me the strength I needed to do my work. If my wife hadn’t given me these meals, I would be physically dead today. Likewise, if I had not gone to church for the nourishment that comes from the Word of God, I would be spiritually dead today.” My mother dragged me to ‘church’, kickin’ and screamin’ some times, but the lessons learned are still used today. The spiritual world is as elusive as the electronic world, yet I know its real and I can see the product of each when I actively use them in my life. My spiritual self is for ever learning of God and his will for me. I see, I hear and I experience the grace of God every day. Faith can see the invisible, believe the incredible and receive the impossible. I thank God for my spiritual and my physical nourishment. It’s all good gravy. When Satan knocks at your door simply say, “Jesus, could you get that for me?”