I confess, as professor emeritus, I have never taught online. I needed to see the students’ eyes, faces, and body language. I needed their feedback.
I admit I have never given an online exam. A Christian professor friend gave one last term, and students cheated. What’s a professor to do?
COVID-19 is certainly changing higher education right now. You need to figure out how to teach everything online. You have to give grades and help resolve student problems—all from a distance. I don’t need to say more, because you have thought of all these and more.
But you and I have been challenged before.
Remember that required class in the field that was your academic Achilles heel?
Recall that dissertation or thesis? Maybe you were such a good student that none of these phased you—but for me, writing a dissertation was a lot more daunting at that time than it looks now in long retrospect.
Maybe for you the challenges have been different – that first screaming infant, the “terrible two’s”, teaching your first college class, or chairing the Promotion and Tenure committee? Then again, maybe parenting through the terrible twos helped prepare you for chairing the P and T committee.
We grow so much more when things are rough than when everything is going swimmingly. In James 1:2, the Scriptures tell us, “Count it all joy when you encounter various trials.”
What?
What is joyous about trials?
But James, inspired by the Holy Spirit, doesn’t stop there. “Knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance, and let endurance have its perfect work, that you may perfect and complete lacking nothing.”
So in the midst of COVID-19, “count it all joy” for you are indeed encountering trials. But know this, these trials will increase your endurance.
So What?
As Christ-followers, we can be joyous in the midst of this trial. We are able to encourage one another, but also our not-yet-believing colleagues and friends who do not have the assurance that God is in control.
As Christ-followers, we can be joyous in the midst of this trial because we know God can teach us not just endurance, but other things about Himself as well.
We can use our “isolation” to grow closer, more prayerful, more resilient, and whatever else God wants us to be.
During this trial, we can send encouraging emails to some of our colleagues and students, even administrators.
We can send a text or give a call to someone. We can offer to pray, provide a listening ear, or help with a need.
We can “count it all joy” in the midst of this COVID-19 strangeness, because, as my son-in-law pastor says, “Our biggest problem has already been solved.”
Indeed.
Phil Bishop
University of Alabama