It’s the end of the school year, and the students are done. The teachers are done. Sure, there’s still 9 more school days left, but mentally? We are all done.
As a choir teacher, we finished our final concert and started preparing for next year. Each day, in my class, I’m allowing students to spend the Block cramming for exams in other classes. They are so distracted by dreams of summer and social butterflies on the loose. They all have their phones out just “click clicking” away. Studying is the last thing they want to do.
Today, I had one girl, who I had been waiting on her brain to combust she was studying so hard, come up to my desk. She asked, “Can we go outside? Please?” A few voices from the crowd called, “Please?” Or “Yeah, let’s go!” Next thing I knew, another student said, “Please no. It’s so hot today.” Another voice, “I can’t. I’ll melt.” My favorite comment, “It’s a long walk out there.” (Literally, it’s 20 feet). So, to stop the, now, full fledged debate, I let the kids take a vote-eyes closed, head down. 10 voted to go outside, and 9 did not. Almost half! What?!
When I was in high school, which wasn’t that long ago, I would have jumped at the opportunity to go outside during the school day. My dad raised me to embrace nature; to take big gulps of God’s beauty any chance I get. Maybe nature is artistic, and I’m artsy fartsy. I don’t know.
What I do know, is once they got outside, they were so glad that they did.
They laid in the flowers, breathed in the warmth, and meditated clearly.
You know, Christians are required to meditate. Meditate by definition means “to think deeply or focus one’s mind for a period of time with no distractions; often in silence.”
Psalms 19:14 Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight, oh Lord my Rock and my Redeemer.
Psalms 104:1 Let my meditation be pleasing to Him.
Psalms 119:15-16 I will meditate your precepts And regard Your ways.
Our meditations are required AND required to be thoughts pleasing to God. With God, all things are perfect, so if we feel bogged down, or overwhelmed with life, God has given us an “out”. 1 Corinthians 10:13 says so! Get outside folks.
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