Practicing Perseverance

As a public school teacher, I have had the privilege of meeting some remarkable individuals.  It never ceases to amaze me, the determination some of my students show as they face disabilities, neglect, abuse, mental illness, death, etc. . . . At such a young age, they just keep moving forward, fighting for their futures when most of us would have thrown in the towel. 

In March of this year, I fully believed the yard signs posted saying, “This Too Shall Pass”. I honestly posted comments to my struggling students saying, “This won’t last forever”.   But it seems “this” is going to last a while.  And we are tired.  There are those who have always had to endure hardship.  From the day they were born, they have struggled just to survive, but for me, the verse, “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed, perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed” (2 Corinthians 4:8) has been a mere abstraction.  Most of my struggles have truly been “momentary”.

So, now as I parent two boys and teach teenagers, I feel such a burden knowing that I can no longer assure them that the stress they are feeling will soon be gone.  I can’t tell them when life will return to “normal” or if “normal” will ever return.  School, activities, work, even church are all different and will be, for the foreseeable future.  So, how do I teach them to persevere when I’m not even sure how myself? 

Recently my students read “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King, Jr.  In this well-known piece from the Civil Rights Movement, he mentions the perseverance of the prophets, Paul, Martin Luther and Christ himself.  In Hebrews 11, Paul mentions the faithful fathers of our faith.  From Abel to Noah, and Abraham to Jacob, the blind faith of these men is listed one by one.  This passage is filled with phrases like “yet unseen”, “not knowing where he was going”, and “as good as dead” and reminds us that “These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth . . . Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city” (Hebrews 11: 7-16). 

As I review these verses I am reminded that I am failing miserably.  Failing to choose faith instead of despair as these men did and to model that to those around me.  Failing to realize that this “light momentary affliction” is a part of God’s plan to “prepare” me “for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Corinthians 4: 17). 

Lord, I do not have the strength to persevere in faith during these trying times.  I am weary and prone to despair.  Please give me the faith to pray “help me in my unbelief” (Mark 9:24) like the father in Mark so that I will not only persevere but display the truth that you have already “overcome the world” (John 16:33).