All Aboard!

"the things which you learned"

Philippians 4:9

We're going on a train ride today... on the train of my thoughts.

I know; we do that a lot days on here, but this one's gonna take a longer trip than most.  We are going to go from my Amazing Boy, to creative writing, weightlifting, to Nicholas Cage, to the Hudson River.   Ready?

'boaard!

So my Amazing Boy was working on his homework today.  Working hard, I might add.  I came into his room in the afternoon and he was playing, and I asked him why he wasn't doing his homework, and when he said it was all done.  I was skeptical.  And wrong.  He got out his assignment book and showed me a thing or two.

Well clearly I hadn't given him enough work  : )  so I gave him one more thing to do.  It wasn't much, but it fell under the heading of creative writing, which neither of my kids have ever been fond of.  Now that I think about it, it wasn't one of my favorite things in school, either...

The assignment ~ which came out of a textbook, not my brain ~ was to write a letter with certain grammatical requirements.  And as he was working, he observed that it was rather silly that he was being asked to write a letter that would never get mailed.  I mean, technically we could mail it, but I think when you write a letter because you have to, it might not be all that heartfelt...

So I told him that he's going to do a lot of creative writing in school this year, and he needs to understand that some ~ or most ~ of the assignments might seem pointless to him, but that they will definitely be serving a purpose.  I told him that it's like weightlifting.  Lifting weights can be repetitive, and boring, and might even seem pointless.  And it definitely doesn't seem like it has anything to do with baseball, which is the sport he plays.  But he knows that lifting weights does serve an indirect purpose for him as a baseball player.

And I told him that even though neither of us expected it when we were kids, my hubby and I are both writers.  Not for a profession, but we both write lessons for the Bible studies we are involved in, and learning how to write when we were in school is proving helpful now.

And that's when I started thinking about Nicholas Cage.  Have you seen the movie National Treasure?  It's one of my family's favorites; a fun and educational movie about a man searching for a treasure he believes has been hidden since the days of the Revolutionary War.  The treasure was legendary in his family, so he had known since childhood that it would be his life's work to find it.  Accordingly, he studied everything he thought might be helpful, from U.S. history, to archaeology, to ancient documents and deep sea diving.

And sure enough, during the course of the movie, all of that comes in handy.  At one point, when the bad guys are trying to get to the treasure before he does, he finds himself escaping via the Hudson River.  The first time I saw the movie, I remember thinking to myself, "well, there's his diving training coming in handy!"  And sure enough, all the things about which he had educated himself when he was in high school and college, were necessary for him in his life. 

I love that analogy of what God is doing in our lives.  God knew, when I was learning creative writing, that I would use it someday.   And He knows that what you learned as a child, and what you're learning now, are going to be helpful later.  He wastes nothing, and uses everything for His purposes, whether it's weightlifting, creative writing, or diving. 

Don't ever stop learning.

~ "O God, You have taught me from my youth; 

    and to this day I declare Your wondrous works" ~

Psalm 71:17