I've been back at work for just over a week now, in teacher training sessions, and today my boss asked us to think about how much the world has changed over the past fifteen years. He went on to point out that we are tasked with preparing our students for a world that will likely be vastly different from what it is today. The technology, the industrial landscape, its job market, and the skills that they will require will likely be drastically different from what they are today. So, how can we prepare our children for changes that we don't even know about yet?
We do it by teaching them the timeless truth. We teach them how to learn. We teach them how to get it done, whatever it may be. We teach them how to work with someone else (especially someone else who gets on their nerves). We teach them to bring calm to high-pressure situations. We teach them that customer service will always matter. We teach them to accept discipline. We teach them to discipline themselves, so someone else won't have to. We teach them to correct mistakes instead of denying them. We teach them to listen more than they speak. We teach them to forgive others. We teach them to forgive themselves, to get up, and to move on. We teach them to create value for their customers and employers. We teach them contentment. We teach them to think. We teach them that there is truth, and that they need to find it, align and realign themselves to it, and stand on it. We teach them wisdom.
The book of Proverbs is the obvious place to begin to study timeless wisdom (and for good reason), as it teaches us that the one God, the creator and sustainer of the universe and author of the laws by which it is governed, is the source of all wisdom, but Isaiah 33:6 has become one of my favorite verses lately. It reads: "Wisdom and knowledge will be the stability of your times, and the strength of salvation; the fear of the Lord is His treasure." The Word of God is not just the stability of Isaiah's time, my time, or someone else's time. He is "the stability of your time," (emphasis added) in essence, for all time. My children, and their children, for as many generations as we are given, will be able to live just as I have and those before me have, on the Word of God.