“Jesus Christ; the same yesterday, today, and forever.”
Class was in session and my teachers were all around me. It wasn’t the first time that I sat in my teacher’s position behind my desk and listened and observed as my little elementary school students educated me.
Everyday after lunch for these past two years, I have read another chapter from the “Little House on the Prairie’ series and now we had come to the final book. It’s a sad little book, really, “The First Four Years,” its manuscript discovered after Laura Ingalls Wilder’s death. The publishers were committed to keeping the manuscript as unaltered as possible, though the style of writing was quite different from Mrs. Wilder’s previous books. A close friend of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s daughter, Rose, confided that Laura lost interest in completing this final chapter of the story of her life after her beloved husband, Almonzo, died. It’s a book of changes; Laura grows up, leaves home, gets married, and moves away. My students, ages 7-10, couldn’t quite come to terms with all of these changes and it made them all a little sad. For two years, a least one chapter a week would tell of some hilarious childhood escapade Laura got herself into, or of some exciting pioneer adventure. There were daily instructions given by Laura’s kind mother, “Ma” and always some wit and wisdom from “Pa.”
For two years, we, as a class, traveled the open prairie with the Ingalls family and ate baked beans and drank hot black coffee cooked over an open campfire. We lay on wildflower-covered prairies, under a black velvet canopy of sky that was riveted with millions of diamonds and fell asleep listening to the song of the coyotes. We fearlessly crossed raging, half-frozen rivers, and felt the hair on the back of our necks stand up as we rode bare back through the woods with Pa and were chased by ravening wolves. We all got a little misty eyed and shared in the huge disappointment when Pa lost his finest wheat crop in a matter of minutes to armies of ugly brown grasshoppers. But best of all, we learned of, we felt, the warmth of a happy, close, loving, young family who survived the worst hardships and deepest heartaches and were comforted by the sweet strains of Pa’s old fiddle at the close of the day. This last book leaves all of those golden days behind and causes you to reflect upon them. And thought they are just stories and you can always reread them, you feel a certain sadness when the last page is read and the book is closed.
Someone in the class, a little third grade boy piped up as if out of slumber one day as I was reading these few final chapters and lisped, “Wait! You mean Laura dothent live at home with Pa and Ma anymore?!” “No,” I gently reminded him, more than a little amused that his little nine-year-old self just came to this realization—“those days are all over, this is a new life Laura is starting now.” He looked disenchanted. “Why did she ever want to go away from her parenths?” another soft voice whined. “Well,” I answered, “It’s not that she wanted to leave them to get away—it’s just that life changes, people change, and life goes on. There are always new things ahead…” “I’m not doin’ that,” a fourth grade girl quietly said as she twisted one of her braids. “Doing what?” I asked. “Leaving my pa and ma…” She was interrupted with a burst of laughter for calling her parents Pa and Ma. “You know what I mean!” she giggled to the class. “I’m not leaving just because I’m getting bigger, I’m staying with them. Besides,” she sincerely continued, “they’ll miss me.” A sixth grade boy whom I have taught since first grade and who was in his final weeks of my tutelage, brought out the fact that our class is like that. You start out little, grow up all those years, and then, before you know it, you have to leave Mrs. Graf’s class. “I don’t even want to leave,” Justin said, sounding like someone’s grandfather rather than a twelve-year-old sixth-grader. “But you just know when your time comes…” Looking at him sitting there, the younger kids all wide-eyed and staring at him, I thought back to his first day of school when I turned a corner in the classroom at recess time and found him crying in his older sister’s lap. She was crying too. “What’s wrong guys?” I asked as I knelt beside them. “Nobody wants to play with Justin outside…” Melissa sniffed, “An they said I’m too little an’ I might get kicked by the big boys!” Justin cried. “Well now,” I comforted him, “We’ll just have to find something for you to do at recess, won’t we?’ The next day, he brought in a pogo stick and was boinging around the church parking lot at recess. Not surprisingly, there was line of kids waiting to try it—a long line which included several “big boys” who only the day before found Justin “too little” to hang around. (Life has the sweetest rewards sometimes!)
Our class conversation came to a close that day with my explaining to the class that life is full of changes and that you can’t be afraid of change. It’s true that as you grow up things become different—but it doesn’t necessarily follow that those changes are bad. You have to be brave and really, make friends with change because, in the words of a famous writer, “If you can be sure of anything in this life, you can be sure it is going to change.” Justine spoke up, breaking the pensive silence. “I guess I really couldn’t stay in this class forever, anyway…” “Yeah,” a little girl chirped up, “an’ Laura would get too big to stay with Ma and Pa to do all of her little girl chores an’ play little girl games for always…” I listened for a few more moments to these same children, who only a few moments ago were lamenting the fact that they had to grow up, now list the reasons why it was imperative to do so. And they began to think about what a boring place the world would be without change; the same dinners everyday, the same weather, even the same day of the week. What if, someone said, it was always Monday when you woke up! Nobody wanted a world full of Mondays.
Everyone seemed to brighten up and even, maybe just a little, grow up as well.
We are so blessed in this ever-changing world we live in as Christians to know the One who never changes. And by looking unto Jesus, our hearts compel us—be brave, have faith, go forward.
Encouragingly yours,
Liz
