Wednesday, February 15, 2017

Devotion 2.16.17

School districts, created from a law, are to be governed by a board of trustees.  In the eyes of the law, school districts are political subdivisions, so the weight of the office of trustee conveys some governmental authority.  The trustee only has authority, however, when sitting with the other trustees in a legally called meeting.  Yet there is a lengthy history of conflict within school districts that arises from simple actions that created a conflict that festered into a term called a "brouhaha."  A brouhaha infers actions and events that bordered on chaotic but were, for all intents and purposes, a noisy and overexcited event.

Sometimes the conflict can be traced back to an innocent action.  For example, in The Andy Griffith Show, we see Barney, the highly excitable deputy, decide to cite Gomer, a simple and friendly mechanic, for a U-turn.  Probably in the confines of the law, but Barney could never allow something to be simple and routine, and in the end, it turned into a brouhaha with Andy needing to intervene and the town taking Gomer's side, all on the streets of Mayberry. So in schools, the mother of a teacher turns to a trustee one Sunday at church to inform the trustee the principal got upset with the teacher (a variation of the truth, the principal asked why the teacher was late).  The trustee, not in the roll of the trustee because he isn't around the table in a formal meeting, calls the principal at home that same Sunday.  The principal becomes defensive upsetting the trustee.  The trustee calls the superintendent, who in turn calls the principal, while the trustee calls another trustee.  You get the idea.

I've sometimes felt that football games should be held on Monday nights because that gives time and space before the weekend.  As it is right now, a football game is played on Friday, and when it is a loss, the town has the weekend to mull it over, Saturday at the coffee shops and Sundays at church.

Like a family, like a school, and like a church, sometimes a conflict can arise from the simplest of misunderstandings or actions.  Sometimes it is completely innocent.  But allowed to fester by time and space, it can become beyond a brouhaha into a conflict that requires intervention, sometimes by a third party. 

For the church (and followers of Christ including their families, their organizations, and their places of work), conflict should be treated in a timely fashion, with the foundation for that solution being Christ as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 3, "For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ."  That foundation can protect us in times where conflict arises. 

Pray that our one foundation is Jesus Christ the Lord.  We are his "new creations," by water and by Word.  ("The Church's One Foundation," Samuel Stone, 1866) Pray we always lift our eyes to Christ, in good times and in times of need.

Hope Men's Ministry

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