Article October 23, 2000 Issue

What is good enough?

God—the best possible Teacher

By Kristen Lynch

One day, I was sitting in the back of the classroom. I was a substitute kindergarten teacher. Up front, the regular teacher was explaining a simple concept to the children. She had drawn some pictures to describe what she wanted them to learn. They were discussing the concept, but the children weren't quite getting it.

The answers they gave were cute, funny, and sometimes very creative—but wrong. Never once did the teacher consider accepting those cute but wrong answers. She patiently encouraged them to find the right one.

This fits so neatly into my understanding of how God works. Often we struggle with a concept. We come up with a million answers—some cute, some creative—but they aren't always the right one.

She patiently encouraged them to find the right answer.

But I love this promise in the Bible: "And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man hisbrother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord" (Jer. 31:34). What a promise! Each of us—from the greatest to the least, from the oldest to the youngest, from the most educated to the least privileged—has a direct connection to God. We are all His kindergarten students, and more. We are God's own sons and daughters. God wouldn't allow us to make a mistake. We are held in God's loving arms, patiently being instructed until we see what is true.

That teacher patiently worked with those little kindergartners until they got the lesson. As that teacher was patient with her students, God stays right with us, now and always, until we learn our lessons. Through God's patient teaching, we'll know all we need to know at the very moment when we need to know it. That's good enough.

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