Wednesday, Are we clear yet?

As teachers, we are challenged to not only be Biblically based, but to be clear, interesting and relevant to modern learners. The letters B, C, I, R are easy to remember, but a good acrostic might be helpful. Any ideas?

Being clear on what students are to learn requires that I avoid introducing some possibly good ideas during the lesson if they might cause confusion. Steve Smartt usually writes clearly in the Florida Baptist Witness and he offers the illustration of sniping the cocoon of the emperor moth to make the point that struggling is exactly what we need. Steve's anecdote about Bob Hope not deserving arthritis is useful to make the point that regardless of circumstance, God faithfully loves us.

Thanks to Pee Wee McD for suggesting that 'baseball' might be used as an illustration (see comments on yesterday's post). That led to the idea of using a glove and baseball to illustrate how we depend on the glove to handle whatever type of ball comes our way. God is like the glove. We can depend on Him, and to remain effective we can't leave Him out of any circumstance in our life, including good times and bad times.

Approximately half of the people in the United States depend on eyeglasses or contact lenses to see clearly. This is true for many diverse tasks, such as reading, playing sports, operating a chain saw, or driving a car. Instead of a glove and baseball, it might be useful to put up an eyechart and ask volunteers (with glasses) to read some of the lines correctly. Have them remove their glasses and re-read the same lines. Likely, they'll miss some letters. The idea is that we rely on our eyeglasses to be effective in a variety of life circumstances. Without them, we become ineffective. In same way, we depend on God to help us in whatever life circumstance we find ourselves. Without God, we fail.

I'm beginning to see pretty clear now! The main point of the lesson is to encourage learners to depend on God's faithfulness. An interesting sermon on just this point and how we derive hope from it was delivered by Dr. Steven C. Riser.