Be friends with those who are wise, and you will become wise. Choose fools to be your friends, and you will have trouble. Proverbs 13:20.
Can I hang this in my classroom, in the hall, in the girls and boys restroom? Middle school years are tough. Wait, so are high school, college, and young adult years. Shoot, forget just hanging this in my classroom, let’s just put out a big billboard on the interstate.
Wise doesn’t just have to be intelligence (even though that helps), but just being sensible about choices we make in life.
This verse also reminds me about chapter 11 that I recently taught the students. This chapter was about integers. When we discussed adding positive numbers, you keep going in the “positive” direction. Negative numbers added together just keeps heading in the negative direction. And when you add a positive and a negative number together, the result depends on the greater digit. Oooo, don’t you know that Mrs. Shuff was in full “life lesson” mode.
I even did the old illustration that my youth pastor demonstrated for us many (many) years ago at a youth lake retreat. I had one student stand on a chair (Shhh. I was right there.) who represented the positive, and the other student standing on the ground representing the negative. They would lock arms and try to pull one another either up or down. It was easier for the negative person to pull the positive person down, unless the one standing on the chair was a much greater person.
I was delighted to see that when some of the students created a card or letter for me last week during Teacher Appreciation Week, they even referred back to this lesson. Yes! Life lesson on friendship learned!
Blessings to you.
May 15
