HERONS IN EDUCATION
March 03, 2021
Prayer: Jesus, thank you for personally speaking to us, inspiring us, encouraging us and teaching us through nature, your creation.
Scripture: But ask the animals and they will teach you, or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you. Job 12:7
For the last eight years, mating pairs of yellow crested night herons have appeared and nested in the tops of the live oak trees in my front yard. They usually arrive during spring break in March and leave by the end of June. They are two feet tall and weigh about two pounds. They use the same nests year after year and amazingly, their nests have withstood two hurricanes. The odd thing is, I do not live in the country. I live in the suburbs in the center of Rosenberg, Texas. This year there are eight birds with four nests.
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When I first saw these birds, I asked myself, “What are they doing here? Don’t they belong somewhere else out in the wild?”
The simple answers to those questions are, “God brought them. It is their instinct: what God has programmed them to do. They have a reliable local food source, fewer predators (raccoons and crows) than they do in the wild, and strong tall trees.”
Many people similarly question the presence of Christian student and staff organizations that meet on school property during off duty hours, “What are they doing here? Don’t these groups belong in the community church and not here? Isn’t it illegal for them to meet here?”
God has placed us, Christian educators, in the front yard of public education. He has programmed us to agree in prayer and to encourage one another to seek and serve Him first where we work. We live in a country that has freedom of religion, not freedom from religion. Federal guidelines specifically allow these groups to nest (meet) in schools.
Just like these birds, we are to build our professional nests in high places. We are to take the high road, to hold ourselves and one another to the highest ethical standards of professional conduct and to provide the highest possible quality of service to parents, students, and staff members. As God binds us together with encouragement and prayer, we can weather the storms of the latest educational fads, technological changes, student behaviors, test pressures, politics, and administrative moves.
Every year these birds inspire me with their beauty, grace, loud piercing squawks, blue eggshells I find beneath their nests, their faithfulness to return year after and year to the same nest, and the cooperative commitment the parent birds exercise while raising their young.
Start or keep building the nest, the Christian community of believers, at the school where you migrate each year. You belong there. God has placed you there. Inspire people with your beauty, grace (unconditional love freely given), and the shells (obstacles) your students break through, your cries to God for help, your faithfulness year after year, and for your commitment to cooperatively raising young people in His schools.
Copyright Don Clark Email [email protected]
This was perfect timing!
Thank you for this lovely illustration and tying it into what & Who we as public school educators represent.
These are the most difficult days in education, in my opinion.
This devotion was balm to my soul.
Thank you.