Training for Vocation and Life Work

Education is an immeasurable benefit. During one of my Saturday morning garage sale forays I picked up a 50-cent treasure, Dr. Criswell Freeman’s The Teachers’ Book of Wisdom. The one-liners of people from many walks of life are each worthy of more than the pittance I paid for the volume.

My favorite humorist, Mark Twain, spoofed, "Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education." Every vocation, all who thrive in life have had the privilege of being trained, taught and formed.

Consider an experience many of us have known. Click, click, click . . . the sound of a buzz or bell, and everything in "Computerland" is as it ought to be! Bill, the local computer tech who sits across the aisle from us in church, recently untangled the computer equivalent of the Gordian Knot for me. Otis, my son-in-law, is of equal skill. Because of training, education and persistent application of skills Bill and Otis can restore my computer wastelands into beautiful gardens of digital data.

I am an unqualified layperson, not a professional educator, but I believe that one of the most important dimensions in the formation of a youth’s life is an assessment of aptitude. I am convinced that the difference between technical people and me is aptitude! If I gave the rest of my life to honing computer skills, I would certainly fall short of their expertise. I am simply short of raw material when it comes to understanding digital systems and organizing minutia.

Parents, teachers, mentors, or any adult committed to forming young people in Christian character and life skills must accept the daunting responsibility of bringing others face-to-face with how God has created them. Not too many people play professional basketball who are less than 6 feet tall. While I am 6 feet tall, I have so little athletic skill that I played on an intermural team named the "Klunkers." (We never won a game.) I simply didn’t have enough raw material for any coach to develop. One naturally gifted to work with his hands ought not be forced to sit at a desk writing technical journals.

Manoah, Samson’s father, asked the angel of the Lord, "When your words are fulfilled, what is to be the rule for the boy's life and work?" (Judges 13:12) The happy, expectant father was wise in inquiring about the unborn boy’s life purpose and vocation. I wonder how many boys and girls would grow to be better adjusted, happy with their lives, if their parents had been as Manoah. You and I have both noticed "cabbages with a college education," those unhappy, poorly adjusted adults struggling to do something for which they are ill suited.