Dont Teach Me...Tell Me
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When I was a child I would ask my parents where the sun would go at night. I couldn't understand why the sun had to go away every night for no apparent reason. I knew that when I would wakeup in the morning the sun would be there for me to go outside and play but for some strange reason as the day progressed, the sun would leave me. When the sun fully left for the day then my playtime would come to an end and I would have to get home quickly, always before the street lights came on. My mother tried to explain to me that the sun will come back tomorrow and I will be able to play again, but it wasn't until the sun came back a few times that I finally believed her. I could have believed her based on what she said but more often than not experience has to replace words as our teacher because of our lack of understanding and faith.
When hard times are visiting our daily lives all we see are dark nights followed by dreary days and both have no light in sight. "A night is only as dark as you think it appears", are great words usually quoted by people that are not going through present difficulties. To hear the night is only as dark as we think it appears seems to have no helpful effects because we believe this is the darkest night that we have seen thus far. We also believe that since our life is going through this dark period, there is no way it could be lighter if we could somehow change the way we "thought" about it, what does our thinking have to do with the darkness we see and are experiencing. Again, we see that even though the words stated are true, it's the experiences that we are having that have the most impact on us and thus we disregard great words as just letters spoken that have no application to our lives.
When attempting to endure a difficult period we want to often just say, "don't teach me just tell me", but the question is, will we really learn from words alone? In school we learn lessons, facts, methods and quotes from the words of an instructor but we are given tangible tests because there needs to be validation of words learned. In life we desire to get the great results but never want to walk the difficult paths that those goals require. It takes a great amount of faith to walk through a valley, with a map that says take the difficult path, and believe that at the end of that path is the increase that you so dearly seek. The true lesson seems to be learned not when someone tells you that the increase awaits you, not when you read the map and see the actual steps to take to the increase and not when you are walking the path and cannot see any increase. The true lesson is learned when you obtain the increase that was promised to you and look back and realize that everything said to you was true, then and only then will you go tell someone else how to walk in faith and hopefully they will believe your words.
