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I had more than one day this week at school that was especially challenging. When I say school, I mean the ninth grade English students that I teach at a local high school. And when I say challenging, I mean ugh-I'm-so-tired-this-is-nothing-but-work-will-
it-ever-get-better challenging.

I've got a few kids (and every school has them) who take up so much of my energy because of their behavior. There are two students in particular whose mouths run like an overflowing sewer, if you know what I mean. I've been unpleasantly surprised at how few students don't curse at school- a fact I find quite upsetting.

So, because it's wrong, and unpleasant, and I have other people's kids in my classroom (who most likely would be surprised to hear what we sometimes hear), I've decided that the hammer has got to come down.

I decided that the one boy with the most frequent surge of ugly mouth was first. I wrote a list of the words he was not allowed to say in my classroom, and explained that I already had a detention slip written for him were he to use one of the so-listed words. He made it through the last 5 minutes of the class period in which I gave him his rules. Whew!

But when he walked into the classroom on Day 2, his first word was "#@$%@#!!!"
So I walked over to his desk, and laid down the white sheet of paper that held his fate.
"Oh, please, Mrs. Mathews. Don't give me that. No one's even in the classroom yet."
"OK. But that's all the grace you're getting. Next time it's detention."

Of course, 3 minutes later, it happened again, and the grace was gone.
I handed him the slip- and he went off!! "I'm not taking it!!….."

To make a very stressful story short, I finally convinced him after class that signing my little "I acknowledge that I've received a detention slip" sheet and serving his time was better than the referral slip that he would receive otherwise. He signed my board, and then walked away spewing another stream of ugliness.

After my first day of swinging the hammer, I went home exhausted and full of despair! What could one lone teacher (because there is only one in my classroom) do in the face of such overwhelming odds?!? I truly didn't know if I had what it took to turn the tide.

And then "click," I turned on a news channel. It was covering the funeral of Rosa Parks, the African-American woman who refused to give her bus seat up for a white man in the 1955 segregated South. A tear streamed down my face. It could be done. This one person started a civil rights movement that changed the face of America.

One man, Paul, changed the whole Roman world with the gospel.

But it wasn't easy.

When we see Rosa Parks lie in-state at the United States Capitol Rotunda, we forget how much pressure she must have endured because of the decision she made to buck the system.

When we see the huge reach of Paul's influence and the honor he now receives in the Christian faith, we often forget the pain he endured for the gospel. Acts 9:15-16 says this of Paul:
"But the Lord said…This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name."

And God is showing me how much I must go through for His name as well. Next to Rosa Parks and Paul, the stream I must swim up seems small. But swim I must.

So what war are you waging? Where is the tide you are trying to turn? Paul would tell us this: "Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up." (Galatians 6:9)

"Bible verse and quote" from Jan Couns

Bible and Quote - February 25 - March 1