Fruit of a Teacher's Strike

              There is much celebration in Chicago this morning, as students and teachers go back to school after a teachers strike.  I have been following the news on this event as I can still vividly remember a teacher’s strike in the Detroit school system.  About forty five years ago, in the 1960’s the Detroit teachers strike lasted more than two weeks.  I was 9 or 10 years old.   An experience I had during the strike had an important effect on me.   

               

                As a child, September was my favorite month of the year.  School began in September and not only did it mean new classes and teachers and a chance to see friends that I didn’t see over the summer, but also new school supplies and clothes.  It is also my birthday month.  I was more than a little distressed that school was delayed.

                

                During the second week of the strike, a friend invited me to come to her church.  The church decided to host a Bible school until regular classes resumed.  I was delighted to accompany her.  At some point during that week, we studied the parable of the sower.  I’m not sure which Gospel reading was presented, but the idea of sowing seeds that would or would not survive in various soils came alive for me.

                

                In fact, to this day, each time I listen to the parable, I think back to that lunchroom and how I didn’t want the Word gobbled up by birds, or to sprout only to not have roots to live, or to get choked.  Of course I wanted the Word to increase thirty or sixty or one hundred fold.  Then, as even now, I stop and think about the kind of soil I have been in the recent past. 

                

                  I would like to think that most of the time I am the “good ground”, and yet I can think of times when I am not.  Certainly, at times I may not hear the Word because I am distracted by thoughts such as:” Do I have enough lunchmeat in the house for sandwiches for tomorrow?” or “How am I going to complete the work for a client and get to my son’s football game?”

                

                  Other times, seed does not sprout because of the business of my life, or seed gets choked because of my preoccupation with grasping for the things of this world. 

                

                   This particular parable is a critical reminder for me to be diligent in hearing the Word, absorbing it and allowing it to produce fruit.  After all, “I did not choose Him, but He chose me to go out and bear fruit that will last.”

                

                   On this crisp fall morning, as children in Chicago are roused out of bed early to begin another year of education, I like to think that maybe some of them had a positive experience over the past two weeks that will have an effect of their lives, even 45 years from now!