Lessons Taught and Lessons Learned

This week was a big teaching week for me. For this past Sunday I was teaching a unit on Spiritual Gifts with my young adults group and later that night teaching a session on "how to lead a Bible study." Then, on Wednesday night, I was taking over the reigns in the Alpha class and teaching on prayer. So, lesson planning galore. I'm not exactly the most creative person either so sometimes I feel like I should be doing more than simply "talking at" people. But I suppose there is a place for everything and for these lessons, college style lecture for a bulk of it would suffice.

This week also brought another valuable lesson to my attention: don't walk around outside barefoot. I was helping a friend carry some stuff to his car at my apartment and went outside without shoes on and stepped on a nail. Now the thing is I did this about 20 some years ago and you think I would have learned my lesson. But no, I had to do it again and it was off to the ER for a tetnus booster and a good cleaning. Needless to say I will not be wandering around barefoot in outside places again any time soon.

And you know, that's the things about lessons whether you're teaching them or learning them, sometimes you just have to learn things more than once. The whole get-it-pounded-into-your-head method. Though it may get annoying or seem repetitive, I think we often learn the best lessons through this. And we're all so A.D.D. these days that we need to hear things over and over again. And that's one reason why I think preaching on Sunday is so important. It's telling people the Gospel every week. And you know, for someone in seminary who hopefully hears the Gospel every day and doesn't forget about it, I still love hearing it and being reminded of what God has done for us. And maybe there is nothing wrong with learning the same lesson over and over again, especially when it's a good lesson. But here's hoping I don't have to step on any more nails anytime soon either (and the foot is doing fine by the way).