March 22, 2024 - Good Morning! It's Friday, March 22.
Earlier this week, I gave a presentation to a regional teachers group. The program featured ten of my favorite daily devotions. Here's one that I wanted to reprint for you today - because it's about teachers and, in these first few days of Spring, celebrates the beauty of nature. It was originally posted January 16, 2021.
I have great respect for teachers. My family is full of them. My daughter is a teacher, so are both my sisters, and too many nieces and nephews to count. I taught high school choir for seven years in the '90's. I had never worked so hard in my life, and I haven't worked that hard since! What a challenging time it is right now for teachers (in the early days of the pandemic), as if they needed another challenge.
Katherine Lee Bates was a 33-year-old teacher in the summer of 1893. She taught high school English for six years before being invited to join the faculty at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. She rose to be the head of the English department and was an early champion of American literature and American writers. In a whimsical note, her holiday poem "Goody Santa Claus" invented the character of "Mrs. Claus". That summer of 1893, Bates had taken a job lecturing at a college in Colorado Springs, Colorado. One afternoon, she and some friends decided to journey to the top of Pike's Peak. I've ridden the train up to that 14-thousand-foot summit - maybe you have, too. But Katherine Bats and her friends had to take a prairie wagon and then rode the last part on mules. These are her words -
"When I reached the top, I was so tired. But then I saw the view and I was filled with joy. It was as if all the wonders of America lay before me." Later that night, inspired by this experience, she jotted down the words to a new poem. It wasn't set to music for another 20 years, and then, as a song, it became hugely popular. Many lobbied that it should be adopted as our National Anthem. It would have gotten my vote.
Katherine Bates never married, never had children. But today, the children in Wellesley, Massachusetts go to Katherine Bates Elementary School, and so do the children in Colorado Springs. A fitting legacy to a teacher. And, in the end, there are these words.
O beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain
For purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain
America, America, God shed His grace on Thee
And crown Thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea!
Meet you back here on Monday,
Bro. David
dmathis@fbccenter.org
