Teaching in the Spirit

I remember one morning I was at the kitchen table reading the Bible. I cannot recall the particular scripture but I do remember what came over me. I started off just by reading line by line. I read a verse and then the next, as if reading any other book. I was even eating a bowl of Frosted Flakes at the same time, so my attention was not solely on the text. Yet, I’m not sure when but my cereal intake became less frequent and my reading slowed down a bit, so slow that I read each line breathing in every word as if it were my only fuel for living. The sentences spoke to me, unveiling a secret that was only disclosed to me in that given moment. Images were created in mind’s eye awakening my senses to a higher sensation. I could not stop reading. I was in so deep. “It seemed like you were in another world,” my wife later mentioned to me when she witnessed the intense interaction of the Bible and I. She was right I was in another world but more like a higher spiritual level. It was a divine level where I could actually feel the presence of Jesus and our thoughts were one. When I left the kitchen table I was at peace and was filled with such clarity that dismissed all confusion that was once present. Since then, I start every morning reading from the Bible, even on those rushed school mornings when I have to wake up my daughter, take out the trash and iron my clothes. It is part of my morning routine. I make time for it, and it is not something that I feel obligated to do but something I look forward to do. The very act expands my awareness and I know what steps take. I have been a teacher for a number of years and everyday is a learning experience. There are moments when I cannot rely on my Masters in Education to figure out what choices to make or what actions to take. Yet, when I started making time to meditate on the scripture I relied on just that, the scripture. Job, Proverbs, Matthew, John, Esther, among others, were my teachers and they gave me clear instruction. I coined the term, “Teaching in the Spirit” in which a physical education in teaching is then balanced with a spiritual meditation, or education, on the Bible. It is my mantra. As a teacher, I have the ability to make a student a success or a failure. I can do the ordinary and walk in the classroom, write a lesson on the board, sit at my desk and never leave it until the clock rings at 3:00pm. It is a pretty uneventful day that leaves the students and me unfulfilled and stagnant. Yet, I am moved to do the extraordinary and make contact with each and every student in my classroom to make sure that they are a success. I look at each student as a child of God, as we all are, yearning to be loved and cared for. Yes, my role as a teacher does not call for me to act this way but I feel God has lead me to do so. In my years of “Teaching in the Spirit,” I have seen the changes in my students and how the scripture is a vehicle for this change … a change for the better. The following passages are experiences that have enhanced my goal to teach in the spirit, and ultimately to live in the spirit.