Since confession is good, I will start with mine. Just to be clear, I never want anyone who hears or reads what I say to think I have personally and thoroughly accomplished the things I encourage others to work at. This word of encouragement today, as a matter of fact, is about “accomplishing” things.

The truth is, I naturally focus on the end of the journey, the goal, finishing the project. When I was teaching my kids, I kept my eye on the clock for that moment when we would be done. I love keeping lists because of the satisfaction I get from accomplishing things, crossing them off the list, crumpling the fully done list to toss it into the trash. I know this is incomprehensible to some of you who have never made a list, but I know a fair share of you do the same. I wrestle with most everything I do and do not enjoy the hard parts. Okay, truthfully, I often agonize to get started and carry out duties in trying to do what I know is good, necessary, and fruitful. I love most things I do–mostly when the job is finished–but rarely enjoy the effort of getting there.

Surely this is a byproduct of being an overachiever. Once I scored on a psychological inventory at the highest percentile the professor had ever seen in that category in his decades of teaching. I knew this was not an achievement to be proud of, ironically, not something to which one should aspire —to over achieve. Naturally it is better than its counterpart, never trying. Growing in the Lord and growing a family has taught me the character-building benefit of perseverance in working toward finishing well. Still, persevering obviously requires patience and persistence. Whether it is planning lessons or performing lessons, perseverance is essential in teaching, as well as in accomplishing anything worthwhile. If how we get through life matters, it goes without saying that life demands a lot of perseverance.

Probably most of us have had at least one child who is driven to work as soon and as quickly as possible through lessons. Getting done is the goal. Speed is essential. We sympathize, because none of us likes to drag out mundane tasks. Obviously, other students could be professional dawdlers and we achievers are incredulous that such creatures even exist. “Don’t you want to get done?” we moan in exasperation.

To get more to the point, I know many of you are at the end or near the end of your first term. Two more to go, we think. How are we going to endure slogging through those two more terms? When our goal is getting done, time stretches out like a prison sentence, an interminable march. Sometimes the two-and-a-half morning hours with little students feels like it is a year long. So, even though I have this same incurable disease, counting down hours or days till this or that deadline is reached, I have learned some valuable lessons, mostly from those rare individuals I have observed who really live in the present moment. I used to think such people didn’t care about finishing, but I have come to believe these souls enjoy the ending far more than I usually do. For me, far too often, finishing is just a pause to get breath in order to start the next mountain climb.

Perhaps my thoughts are running in this direction because I am completing teaching a women’s Bible study on Exodus and the building of the tabernacle. It was a rather demanding and enormous task, the building project, that is. The end result was God himself indwelling the sanctuary. The construction was done to His specifications and the results were pure beauty. That must have been extraordinarily gratifying for all the hands and heads and bodies that had done the labor. The reality was days and days of difficult and tedious effort. The progress must have seemed endlessly slow.

And, is this not how we feel each morning when we steer students to their seats and pray for the strength to do it all again? Let me encourage you to watch the clock so you are able to do justice to each lesson, but to resist the temptation to count down to the last minute, the last page, the last narration, the last broken pencil. Consider what wonders are actually transpiring right around your own table. First, the person or persons before you are living, breathing tabernacles, beautifully designed, incredible in powers of imagination and comprehension as Miss Mason reminds us. The books may be old, the schedule the same, but the children are not. They are growing. They are receiving nutrition never taken in before. They are being presented with ideas as fresh and new as the first day they ever heard or saw them—because it is the first day for them, the first time they have pondered these scenes and situations and concepts. Each day is not just a step forward to a finish line, it is a step into a new world of knowledge. They are receiving vital instruction that will transform their future. They are receiving inspiring ideas that will impact everything they think for the rest of their lives. There is absolutely nothing mundane about any lesson.

This education is not a perseverance course. It is a life-giving, beauty-making endeavor. I can honestly tell you this, in spite of how often I forgot along the way, because most of my children are now teaching their own children. I wasn’t finishing their education for them. They were going on to be people I could not have imagined. So are your children. My practical counsel is that you get up each day and imagine this is the very first time you have had the privilege of introducing other human beings to the joy of living. You play a crucial role today. You must use your imagination, because I guarantee they want to use theirs.

Finishing is inevitable, but it is not the goal. Today is the moment. Live in it. Savor the little improvements and progress and flashes of insight that are happening in every lesson every day. We never regret being alert, aware, and appreciating the ‘right now’. Finishing is inevitable, but living in the present is up to you.  Pay attention! Don’t miss a thing.

~Liz