The Happy Learner

If you ever read my profile you know that I was not a happy student.  To say that I hated school would be an insufficient way of expressing it.  Sunday was my unhappiest day of the week because the next day was Monday.  My kindergarten teacher got things started off on a bad foot and the others along the way made that footpath into a super highway.  One teacher intervened and changed everything.  He taught me to love learning and I could still hate school as much as I wanted.  He taught me that a true student wasn’t one who mastered the monotony of sitting in a desk five days a week doing repetitious work.  A student was one who wanted to know things and was open to learning them. 

Those are the kind of students that God wants.  Anybody can eventually become habituated to sitting in a pew one hour per week and let the Word go over their head.  A student comes to the pew willingly seeking to learn the Word and take it into life.  Learning is for life, not for tests.   Ps. 94:12 says, “Blessed (happy) is the man whom You instruct, O LORD, and teach out of Your law.”  The happiest students are those who want to be instructed by God.  Every day they can find new happiness in this pursuit.

To be instructed by God is not a passive experience.  We must be eagerly involved.  That eagerness will make us attentive to the great things that God wants us to know, to learn and to practice.  God is not monotonous.  He won’t bore us.  He loves to teach.  His subject matter is never irrelevant.  Jesus was called the Teacher.  The Holy Spirit’s name is Teacher.  God gave gifts to the church and teaching is one of them.  God knows a lot about teaching.  We need to actively involve ourselves in learning from Him.  The psalmist said, “Open my eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of Thy law.”  He said simply, “Help me learn.”  If we will come to the Triune God eager to learn, we won’t be disappointed.  We will, in fact, be happy.

Benjamin Ramsey wrote the hymn “Teach Me Thy Way, O Lord”.  We should make it a mainstay of our meditation that will lead us to happy learning.  “Teach me Thy way, O Lord, teach me Thy way! Thy guiding grace afford, teach me Thy way! Help me to walk aright, more by faith, less by sight; lead me with heav’nly light, teach me Thy way!  Long as my life shall last, teach me Thy way! Where’er my lot be cast, teach me Thy way!
Until the race is run, until the journey’s done, until the crown is won, teach me Thy way!”

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