I teach Chinese children English online. I have a few students that I work with consistently, then I have a revolving group of students who engage different teachers. Finally, I have students who may see me a few times before they settle on a specific teacher whether me or someone else. I have concerns about the format. My greatest concern centers around whether or not the learner is getting “in person” opportunities to engage in everyday conversations in English.
You see, you can learn some of a language and maybe even shorter conversations from the online lessons, but without varied engagement within every day experiences, the learner will be limited in their understanding and ability to use the language. Experiences within context of the full language and physical interactions support and reinforce their learning.
This morning I began thinking about how we learned or didn’t about God and how He engages. When I was a little girl and we lived just outside of Muleshoe, TX, my family attended a small, country Southern Baptist Church. We were not as fundamental as some Southern Baptist churches are today but most of the lessons in Sunday School were Bible stories shared by my Granny on her flannel graph board and she would give a simple purpose like be kind or share. It was somewhat like an English lesson online as it had limited engagement of life’s reality for a young farm girl. I “learned” about God. In the Sunday evening classes, my mom taught me how to look up scriptures and we would have “Bible drills”. I memorized the names of the books of the Bible in order. It became a fun game. We also did not have children’s church. So I sat in the service during the sermon. We did lots of low key exercises, but there weren’t any experiences about how to engage God. We would talk about the physical form of praying: fold your hands and bow your head, but not how to wait and hear God.
Looking back, I wonder at how little the adults engaged God. They knew the Bible and they knew to be a community as farm families, but they believed God worked at a distance. I have heard all kinds of reasons: God is holy, He’s too busy for me, He’s got His hands too full to bother with me, It’s not a big deal, etc.
It sounds like God is a drunk, unengaged parent who is overwrought with the demons of the day and unable to be with us in the hardness.
I feel sadness.
“For this is what the high and exalted One says—
he who lives forever, whose name is holy:
“I live in a high and holy place,
but also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit,
to revive the spirit of the lowly
and to revive the heart of the contrite.” (Isaiah 57:15)
We were made to engage God. It is in the engagement that we begin to experience God in ways that revive the spirit and the heart and connects imprinting into us a mutuality with God’s heart beat.
-Dianne