I was unhappy in high school. And I was not the only one. Sharpstown High School had all the worst problems of American high schools, from drugs to riots to shootings. And for several months one year, someone phoned-in bomb threats nearly every day. The first time it happened it was funny and exciting, a fire drill that lasted three hours. It was going to be a great story to tell our parents and the little kids who weren’t in high school yet. Then there was a bomb threat the next day. And the next. It immediately became extremely annoying. One student—probably using a pay phone on campus—was calling in anonymously to report the presence of a bomb (a fake bomb, of course), and now thousands of us would spend two or three hours standing around in the sun and mosquitoes while bomb-sniffing dogs searched every inch of the school.
Thirty years later, the building was demolished and a new high school built in the parking lot next door. Somehow that felt like poetic justice, and we made jokes about blowing up the school. But the jokes rang hollow. As bad as you may hate your school, few really believe it needs blowing up. Deep down we know that education matters. A life without schools, teachers, or instruction would be a terrible loss.
When God punished Israel, education dried up. “Instruction is no more, and even Zion’s prophets receive no visions from the Lord” Lamentations 2:9.
Can you imagine the devastating loss? The better your own education, the more you will recognize what’s at stake. When Hitler came to power in Germany, he started off slowly. He did not immediately round up God’s Chosen People and send them away to their deaths. First he had the children released from schools. Why? Because Jewish children allegedly could not be trusted with an education. How did the Jewish children feel about that? They immediately realized, some perhaps for the first time, how critically important an education was. There would be no more half measures; they would learn as much as possible every chance they had for the rest of their lives.
School is a blessing, not a punishment.
NOT going to school is a punishment.
God, thank you for education, for teachers, for quality instruction. May we work HARD to earn the best education possible. Fill us with a love and passion for your Word! Bless our education in the 66 books of the Bible.
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