“I don’t know why I have to learn this; it’s not like I’m
ever going to use it.”
Sound familiar? More than likely, we’ve all thought
something similar at some point in our education. For me, it was with geometry.
At the time the subject was among my coursework, I was planning on majoring in
history or maybe English in college before going on to library school. When
would I ever need to prove the degrees in a certain angle or the congruence of
two shapes?
Fast forward a decade or so, and you’ll find me sitting at a
restaurant table, history and archival science degrees under my belt, not
having thought of geometry since high school, telling my mother everything I
had learned that day at the National Genealogical Society’s annual Family
History Conference. I was learning about the Genealogical Proof Standard (GPS)
and what was involved in formulating proof statements, proof summaries, and
proof arguments in researching someone’s family history.
“So, kind of like geometry, huh?” my mother asked.
That blew through
some walls in my brain. “ . . . Yeah. Exactly like geometry.”
The similarities were uncanny. Both involved stringing
together statements of proof based on known facts to arrive at conclusions that
were reached by amalgamating the evidence from those statements. Both could
involve proofs from positive or negative evidence (i.e. something that is there
or something that isn’t there). Both involved analyzing what was known to
discover something unknown. Both involved spelling out the steps of the proof
in writing.
And here I thought I’d never use geometry again.
On one level, this anecdote serves as a reminder to us that
when it comes to school, we should learn all we can because we truly never know
how or when we might be able to use what we’ve learned. We never know what
foundation we are laying that we will need to fall back on years down the
road—even if that foundation is simply learning how to learn.
But on another level, my mom’s light-bulb connection between
geometry and genealogy provides a perfect illustration of this truth on a much
deeper level. If we step outside the sphere of institutional education and into
the realm of life-as-education, we’ll see that we can have the same approach to
lessons that come our way in every-day life.
How many times do we experience things—often difficult
things—that seem to serve no purpose? Or maybe we sense that God is teaching us
a lesson through a particular circumstance but for the life of us we can’t
figure out why.
Sometimes years later something else will happen, and we’ll
see that perhaps God had allowed the first event in our lives to prepare us for
the present one. I certainly think that is often the case. He has a way of
knowing what’s coming, after all.
And just like I didn’t realize when I was struggling through
geometric proofs in high school that the process would give me a mental
framework to understand and achieve genealogical proofs one day, oftentimes we
don’t realize when we’re walking through something that God is actually giving
us gifts during that time that we will use in future circumstances.
But it doesn’t stop there. Sometimes those gifts are for
ourselves, but sometimes they’re for other people. Yes, my learning how to
formulate genealogical proofs helps me with researching and documenting my own
family’s story, but it will also help my clients and those to whom I can teach
what I have learned. Similarly, sometimes the trials we endure in life are not
merely for our own benefit but instead are for the benefit of others.
One of my favorite Scripture passages speaks to this very
idea. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 (ESV), “Blessed be the God and Father of
our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who
comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who
are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted
by God.” I firmly believe that
God does not teach us lessons for us to keep them to ourselves. Nor does He
comfort us for us to hoard His blessing.
So the morals of my story today?
Take every opportunity to learn that is presented to you,
even if it doesn’t seem like something worth learning.
Whether in school or in life-at-large, embrace the lessons
thrust upon you; you never know how God will bring them to bear down the road.
And if you’re wondering why on earth God would be trying to
teach you a particular lesson, take an honest look at your own life, yes, but
turn your eyes outward too. It just might be that the benefit of what He’s
teaching you isn’t as much for you as it is for someone else.
And, finally, be thankful for the capacity to learn, for a
brain that can store information and recall it years later not having thought
about it since, for the ability to make connections and to understand things,
and most of all for the God who created us, who gave us these gifts, and who
cares enough about us to comfort us and to graciously supply all our needs.
He is God, but He is also Good.
Praise be to Him.
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