Examples

Today I am thankful for examples. If you're like me, you've probably never thought about it before, but it's examples that help us understand things. As a teacher, you take a new concept and connect it to something that the students already know, their context, so that they understand it. Their context includes their language, culture, age, gender, beliefs, upbringing... for example, if I want to explain the word weave, I could say that their buses weave around the potholes in the road on the way to school. This is a context that they can relate to in order to understand the word.

God does the same thing.

What I've learned the most this year has come from the examples that daily life has given me in looking forward to what heaven will be like. The anticipation I've had to get married, to have visitors, or even to teach a certain lesson reflects the anticipation that I should have daily for Christ's return. Marriage itself is an example of Christ's relationship with the church. I believe that there are even more things which we brush shoulders with day by day that give us a glimpse of eternity... beautiful sunsets, a bird's song in the morning, the smell of the flowers outside my apartment... God demonstrates his glory all around us, a glimpse, an example of what eternal glory will look like.