Your Viewing Angle Matters

Have you ever been in the passenger's seat of a car and looked over at the speedometer?  If so, you probably thought the driver was going a lot faster than they actually were.  This is because of something scientists call parallax error.  

You may have learned about this in your high school chemistry class because it influences how you take measurements in the lab.  Take note of the differences in the reading of this volume.  Depending on the location of your eye, you will read the measurement as higher or lower than it actually is, so students are instructed to get down at a level where their eyes will be perpendicular to the meniscus (for those who don't remember, that's the bottom of the curve).

Don't worry. I'm leading up to a point here, not just teaching you about parallax.  The point is that things look different depending on your point of view.  It's why we say things like, "The grass is always greener on the other side."  That is true both in the metaphorical way it is used (someone else's life looks easier than ours because we don't have their responsibilities) and in the literal sense (looking down at the grass under you means you can see the dirt between the blade, which you don't see when looking at your neighbor's grass).  We are rarely seeing reality exactly the way it is; we are seeing our interpretation of reality from our own perspective.

Acknowledging this in our lives would change a number of things.  I'm going to talk about a few of them here as they have come to my mind recently, but you might think of more.  

Do you have a massively different reaction to a news event than your co-worker?  It could be that the reason for your differences is the difference in your life.  Your black co-worker may have a different reaction to a story of an officer-involved shooting, having just had "the talk" with their son than you do if you have a brother on the force.  Your viewing angle matters.  When your teenage child massively overreacts (at least you think it is a massive overreaction) to your advice to study for his upcoming test, it could be that his view of how much he needs to study for this is different than yours.  In some ways, he has more information informing his view than you do because he is in class and knows how much review he has had and has heard advice from his teacher that you haven't heard.  From your point of view, however, teenagers usually underestimate their need for study, but he doesn't have the experience to know that.  Your neighbor who lost his job at the steel mill is likely to vote differently than the public school teacher across the street.  I am not saying that the truth is always somewhere in the middle; sometimes one person is actually right while the other is wrong.  What I am saying is that recognizing a difference in perspective might help you understand the other person better rather than thinking they are evil or crazy.

People have a tendency to judge the decisions made by others based only on how it affects us and using only the information available to us.  I've seen this a ton in education.  It is easy for me as a science teacher to think only from that perspective and not recognize the needs of the art department.  I have often said that my primary role in department chair meetings is to say, "It doesn't work that way in math and science."  There's a good reason that we have the input of someone from every department, or foreign language might not get what they need for their students.  The same thing applies to how we view decisions made by administrators.  It's so easy for teachers to criticize their admins (and I know that in some schools, there is good reason to), but I also know that I don't have all of the information they do.  If I did, perhaps I would make the same decision.  They have to live in the tension of parent complaints and teacher needs.  They have to deal with issues that affect the entire school while I can be hyperfocused on my own classroom.  We aren't at odds, but we do have different perspectives.  And, I will say this now and for the rest of my life.  I have zero desire to ever be in their position.  Knowing this doesn't mean I always agree with their decisions, but it does help me view the decision more kindly.

The ultimate difference in perspective is that of human beings, a limited and finite perspective, to that of God, Who is unlimited and infinite.  I saw this image on of embroidery on Twitter recently.  When people see needlework, they obviously focus on the front, the intended pattern.  In fact, if you look at embroidered clothing, the back is usually covered with a piece of backing fabric.  The purpose of that fabric is to keep the threads from unraveling, but they also prevent us from seeing the messy side of needlework.  The same is true of how God works events in our lives.  For us, they seem disjointed and messy because we are looking at it from this side of eternity, one stitch at a time.  We see the knots and the untied ends, but God knows the pattern He is weaving.  When Romans says that He "works all things together for good," it is because he can see the whole while we see individual parts.   Job didn't know what was going on when horrible events happened to him, but God knew what his life would mean.   This is why the Bible tells us "Do not lean on your own understanding."  I'm not saying this is easy; I've probably never battled a verse more than that one.  But I do often remind myself that the problem is with my perspective.

Educators, remember that your perspective is different from your students.  Don't trade in your professional judgment to twelve-year-olds, but allow yourself to understand them better.  Remember that your perspective is different from that of parents.  You have an educational goal, but that is only one of the goals in their home.  That doesn't mean you have to give up your goals; it means you understand that there is a difference of viewpoint.  Cut your administrators some slack, recognizing that you view the school from a different angle than they do, changing your interpretation of things.  Remember that changes in your life that seem bad now will become part of a larger pattern, which only God knows fully.  This will prevent you from falling victim to parallax error.

Teaching Videos - a Weird Coping Mechanism

Note:  This is a very "teacher-y" post.  If you aren't a teacher, feel free to keep reading, but don't expect to get much out of it.

The first time I heard about "flipping the classroom," I thought it seemed like something I might like to do every now and then, particularly if the practice problems for a concept were difficult enough that they needed more guided practice than independent practice.  I made a list of 5-6 topics I thought I might like to do it with, but I never did anything with that list.  That summer, I just could not summon the motivation to make those videos.  Perhaps I was daunted by the idea of recording my voice; perhaps I couldn't envision students watching the videos at home and figured I would have to reteach it anyway.  The bottom line, though, was that I didn't really believe in the concept enough to follow through with it.  That was 2015, and the videos never got made.

Enter the pandemic.  Teachers were challenged in ways we never had been before.  First, was the remote spring.  As a science teacher, the challenge was even more daunting because hands-on experiences were not possible.  I could demonstrate some things from my house, but there were a few that weren't feasible to show across a computer screen (black light demonstrations, lasers bouncing off of mirrors, color mixing, static electricity).  We made it work as well as we could, and I did end up making one video - not for the purpose of flipping the class but because I couldn't get my computer close enough to "the board" when I was live streaming, so I premade a video of the calculations I needed to show in a place where I could put the camera closer to the writing.

Then, came the hybrid year, a time I still don't know how to talk about with anyone who didn't do it.  As we split focus between the students who joined us from home and those in front of us, we exhausted our brain capacity each and every day.  We worked as hard as we could possibly work and made it (sort of) work while praying for the day we wouldn't have to do it anymore.  Then, we found that it was possible that virtual teaching might be part of our post-pandemic future.  Ideas were tossed around about asynchronous learning (which means pre-prepared videos).  I didn't want to even think about the possibility, but I had to adapt to the idea just in case; so I did what I do - I made a list.  I made a list of every topic I teach and what kind of video (document camera over my hand while I worked through a problem, voice-over images, etc.) might be best suited to teach each topic.  When I was done, my list had 118 items.

Thankfully, by the end of that school year, our administration had listened to our feedback and decided not to pursue this virtual plan.  But my list was already made, and I reasoned that it wasn't going to hurt to have a video pool in case I was absent one day or a student had an extended absence.  That summer, I made 63 videos, some of which do double duty because I teach some of the same topics in both 8th grade and physics, making it effectively 78 videos.  I didn't do a lot with them that year, except occasionally send one to someone who was out or asked for extra help.  The following summer, I made 15 or so more.  Last year, I gave everyone access to them on our LMS, and they were used pretty well (more on that in another paragraph), but because I didn't have one for everything, there were still some limitations on how I could use them.  This summer, I set out to finish the rest of the list.  When I left for camp, there were still two left to make, and I finished those the week we got back!  I now how have 118 videos of me teaching concepts (with images) or working example problems. 

So, you may be wondering how they will be used if we don't have a virtual program.  Here are a few ways these videos can be / have been helpful.

1. Mitigating Student Absences - Ask any teacher in America and they will tell you that attendance has become a real problem since the return from the pandemic.  It's not quite as bad at GRACE as other places, but we have certainly seen an upward trend in absences.  Families go on trips more frequently, and more students are on traveling teams that pull them out of class frequently.  When students send me emails informing me that they will be out Thursday and Friday of next week, I am now able to respond with, "Read pages 46-48 and watch the video on Free Fall."  Is it the same as being in class?  Absolutely not; nothing replaces real live teaching with peer interaction and retrieval opportunities with checks for understanding.  But it mitigates the absence.  They aren't coming back with no idea what we did while they were gone, and when they meet with me, it takes less time.
2. Study Help - Some students have used these videos to help them review things as they study.  In particular, the videos with math problems worked out have proved helpful.  They can pause, do step 1, then continue the video to see if they did it correctly.  Instant feedback!  They didn't all use them for this, but I know some of them did because I got an email telling me about an error and a student who thanked me for them in a teacher appreciation week card.
3. Squeezing in Content - At the end of the semester, we are often running out of time to cover everything.  Or sometimes, we are pushing up against a break, and I cut something out in order to end the chapter just before it.  These videos will give me a chance to include some of the less complex things that don't need as much explicit instruction from me by assigning the video as homework.

So, now that I have told you that I'm glad to have these videos at my disposal, let me set your teacher mind at ease.  I am not going to recommend that you do this, and I would actively resist any effort by administrators to push teachers into doing this.  

For one thing, it was something I chose to do with my own time out of fear and chronic stress.  I still don't know if it was a healthy coping mechanism.  I mean, it is certainly healthier than drinking or overeating or compulsive shopping, but anything can be unhealthy.  (I learned that many years ago when I coped with grief by crocheting 28 scarves and giving myself carpal tunnel syndrome in my right wrist until I was in the craft store and said out loud, "Beth, step away from the yarn. You have a problem.").   Second, to do this right takes many, many hours.  I'm not sure people recognize how long it takes to edit video. It can take an hour to get just ten minutes of completed video.  The quickest ones were the math ones because it was just my hand under a document camera while I talked my way through solving the problem, so they required no editing afterward.  If you want to dip your toe in the water, maybe start with videos like that.  Lastly, video teaching is not the future.  I'm going write that again and use something I hate using, all caps.  VIDEO TEACHING IS NOT THE FUTURE.  We should have learned that from the pandemic, but I'm not sure we did.  As I said earlier, these videos mitigate people's absences, but they are not the same as engaging a class of students in real teaching.  Research shows this, and it IS a hill on which I am willing to die.  Do this if it is something you want to do, and enjoy the benefits I described earlier, but do not pressure yourself to do it because you think you should.

 

RFK Camp Big Ideas

This week was my 16th year of Royal Family Kids Camp.  Because they rotate through 5 themes (interrupted every 4 years by the Olympic theme), this is the third time I have experienced the year in which the Bible story is Joseph.  It is, hands down, my favorite theme.  That's not to negate the years in which we teach campers about Esther or David or Daniel, but there is something about the Joseph story that resonates with these kids because Joseph was part of an extremely dysfunctional family - I mean, his brothers made him a victim of human trafficking, for heaven's sake.  It is also because it is my favorite collection of Big Ideas (that's the name for each day's takeaway from the drama, the story, the object lesson, and the puppets).  All of the Big Ideas are great, but there is just something special about the collection of Big Ideas in the Joseph year.  They are important for our campers because of their life experiences, but I'm writing about them today because they are important for EVERYONE.

God is Trustworthy, Even When Things Are Hard - The connection to our campers is obvious here, but this year, it struck me more than ever what an important message this is for all of us.  During the pandemic lockdowns, I wrote to each of my students.  I wrote this exact thing in the cards I sent (although I think I added the word faithful).  Life is often hard, and being a Christian doesn't always make it easier; in fact, Jesus warned us that most of the time, following Him would make things harder.  Yet, we know that God is sovereign, which should be comforting because it frees us from the need to understand everything.  We can trust that he knows how the puzzle pieces fit together when we can't see the top of the box.

God Helps Me Make Choices - Kids from abusive backgrounds have few choices.  They didn't choose to be removed from their homes.  They don't choose to be moved in the middle of the night from one placement to another, and they certainly wouldn't choose to have it happen 8 times in two years, which one of our kids has had.  I'm not sure they even choose to come to camp.  However, like everyone, they will be faced with choices in their lives, and they need training in making them.  To that end, we have structured camp to give them tons of choices - about food, activities, what colors they want to make things, whether they want to swim in the deep end of the pool, and a million other things.  But we also talk to them about their biggest choice, whether to respond to God's Word.  And while we encourage them to do that, we know that only God can draw them to that choice.  This is true for all of us.  As we decide how to respond to God and his Word, he will help us make those choices. 

God Has Great Plans for Everyone - Before leaving for camp on Saturday, I asked a friend to pray for us and messaged him with some specifics.  One of the things I put in that message was about the cognitive effect of abuse and neglect.  It puts our kids in a constant state of alert for danger.  When your brain is in a perpetual state of fight or flight, there is little to no capacity to think about the future.  When our ancestors were running from a sabertooth tiger, they didn't think about what they would do the next day or what story they would tell around the fire.  They worried about surviving the moment.  While I thought a lot about the future as a child, hoping first to be an astronaut and then a vet, a pharmacist, and a physical therapist, until God finally showed me that I was going to teach physics, our campers don't necessarily have the cognitive capacity for that.  The activities we do for them often involve planning and overcoming challenges.  We want them to have a mental imprint of building something out of wood and then designing how to paint it.  We want them to look back on being nervous about riding a horse and then having the feeling of accomplishment after having done it.  We want them to discover a potential skill in engineering or artistry or sports and then have conversations with them about how they might use that skill in the future because we want them to think about having a future.  

But just yesterday, I was having an online conversation with a former student about God's plans.  He had posted a rather nihilistic image about how we work 8 hours to live for 4 and how we work 6 days to live for 1.  It was concerning to me that he thought work wasn't part of his life.  He responded that not everyone has the luxury of enjoying their jobs (like he didn't know that I spent some time cleaning arena bathrooms for minimum wage). What I told him is what I tell all of my students.  Whatever God puts in front of you to do each day IS your life, whether that is work or recreation or reading a book; and how we do it is an act of worship.  God has great plans for everyone.  Sometimes, those plans are big things, which is what we usually think about; but sometimes, those plans are about having a conversation with a co-worker, participating in a workout, or having dinner with a friend.  My friend Ben will appreciate it if I use this question and answer from the Westminster shorter catechism - Q: What is the chief end of man.  A. Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.  This is what gives all of life and work and play dignity and value in service to God, whether you enjoy your job or not.  

God Helps Me Forgive - I don't need to write much about this one.  While our campers have some deep wounds from things that should never happen to them, we also know that unforgiveness leads to bitterness and resentment.  Most of us don't have injuries in our lives as deep as theirs, but we all have people in our life that we need to forgive.  We also know that we cannot forgive in our own strength or out of our own sinful nature.  Only God can put forgiveness in us.  This was communicated to our campers by those in charge of the program, but it was also communicated to the staff in our devotion time with the directors by telling us a story of forgiving her father by praying, "God, I don't feel this and can't do it.  Please put forgiveness in me."  She asked it for years until God finally did put that forgiveness in her.  

God Can Bring Good Out of Bad - At the end of the story of Joseph in Genesis 50 is one of the most well-known lines in the Old Testament, "As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today."  It can be hard for us to see how anything good can come out of bad situations, yet we know it does.  We all have a story we can tell about a time when things didn't happen the way we wanted them to, but now we are glad for that.  It doesn't mean we are glad the bad thing happened, but it means we are grateful that God can make good come from anything.  His plans are bigger and deeper and greater and more complex than we can ever fathom.  

I can't share photos that include campers' faces, but this picture is okay.  This is a child wrapping her flannel shirt around a cold adult.  It was a sweet moment of love and care that wouldn't have happened if situations were ideal.  When looking for how God brings good out of bad, it doesn't always have to be big things.  It can be moments like this one.

So, to bring this full circle, it is best if we remember that he is sovereign and we are not and that we would make terrible gods.  Then, we can trust him when things are hard and have the capacity to make choices and forgive and fulfill His plans for us, knowing that he will work things for his glory and our good.

I Tried it Once. It Didn't Work.

Recently, I tweeted that I was creating a Study Skills elective and asked people to tell me what they thought was the most essential to include.  In case you were wondering, this was not, for the most part, a helpful exercise.  Some people suggested the two books I was already using.  Some gave me really weak things that I wouldn't likely spend time on (I'm not telling a high school student to organize a notebook in a specific way).  By far, the weirdest piece of advice I got was this (She meant well, so I've blotted out her name).

First of all, are any of these study skills?  You might be able to make a case for note-taking (and I will be spending a little time showing them Daniel Willingham's advice about figuring out the thematic hierarchy in a lecture in order to make connections in your notes), but again with organizing?  Have you ever tried to impose someone else's organizational method on yourself?  It doesn't work.

But here is my real beef with this advice.  "I'd teach different ways to do each thing and then have them try each way for a week or so."  This feels like the least effective strategy I can possibly imagine.  There is no world in which a week is enough time to know if something will work.  That's not even enough time to cover one chapter in a class and see the results of your method on a test.  

I spent a lot of time trying to figure out why an educator would give me this advice, so I finally went to look at her profile.  She isn't an educator.  She works in machine learning, a field in which "fail early" and "multiple iterations" are prized.  That helped it make some sense.  The tweet has a bit of a learning styles vibe to it with "so they can see what works and doesn't for them."  People who are up on education research know that the idea that we all learn differently and must find our personally preferred method or it won't work for us is not true.  While it is true that every brain is different, most of them function in similar ways to the rest, so we need to find what works, not what works for us.

But mostly, I think it rubbed me the wrong way because it reflects the short attention span, multi-task-attempting, commitment-dropping culture in which we live.  If I don't see results in the short term, they must not yield results in the long term either.  Instant gratification or nothing.  I'll try this for a week and the judge it inadequate.

When I was a yearbook teacher, students were required to sell two ads to offset the cost of book production.  While I admit this is a daunting task and difficult to do (which is why I only required two), students often had little endurance for it.  One year, a delightful young lady said to me, "I don't know what to do.  I've tried a lot and haven't been able to sell one."  I said, "How many people have you asked?" and she replied, "Like two!"  I laughed so hard I almost fell out of my seat, not because she wasn't adorable but because she had described her efforts as having "tried a lot" only to answer with the number two.  It's a good thing sales is not her future career.  I said, "You are likely to get several no answers before you get a yes.  Keep trying."  

Whether you are attempting to drop an old bad habit or develop a new good habit, one week is not enough to judge if it works.  It is possible one month will not be enough.  Often, there is actually a temporary drop in performance while making the switch.  The illustration below comes from Peps McCrae's weekly newsletter Evidence Snacks.  In this one, he discussed our misconceptions about trying something new.  He said most people believe that if something works, our growth in it will be linear.  It will start working right away, and we will keep getting better at it as we practice.  Yet, this is not the case.  When first implementing a new policy or technique, you may see a drop as you adjust from the way you used to do things to the new way.  For example, my brother took Bowling as a PE class during his freshman year in college.  They taught him a different method than the one he had grown up using.  For a short time, he was a terrible bowler because he hadn't learned the new way very well yet, but he could no longer do it the old way.  It isn't until the new way becomes a well-myelinated pathway that automation allows us to judge the effectiveness of a new method.

Because we expect progress to be linear, we misjudge any drop in performance, but we don't see benefits until the new way of doing things becomes automated.  We often don't like something in the beginning for no other reason than we resist change.  Sometimes, we know something isn't the best way to do it, but it is the way we are accustomed to, so the new way feels like it isn't working.  Daniel Willingham's book Outsmart Your Brain discusses the reasons why you often misjudge something as not working when it really is because the difficult way is yielding long-term benefits rather than short-term feelings of improvement (Google his brilliant pushup analogy).  If I were to follow the advice in this tweet, my students would end the year believing no method worked for them, and I would have failed them as a person who knows how to dig into studies and provide research-based advice.

So, I'm clear on that not being the way to go.  What will I do instead?  Well, first, let's not look at a bunch of ways that might work for us.  Let's look at what the research says works generally (spaced interleaved retrieval practice with feedback).  While individual students may have to adapt methods to fit their schedules and context, the advice we give them should start with research-backed practices.  For that, I am using Barabara Oakley's classic book, Learning How to Learn, and the new book by Daniel Willingham, titled Outsmart Your Brain as well as the amazing website retrievalpractice.org with advice from the lovely researcher Pooja Agarwal.  These sources will allow me to deliver advice with confidence and explanations about why techniques work.  They will practice them for the entire year.  I will add techniques for different thinking levels, but I will not give multiple techniques for the same thing in the hopes that one might land.  

This is not just an important concept in education, so let's look at it in everyday life.  If you have a goal to achieve, it is going to take time.  Let's say you want to lose 15 pounds.  You can't go to one spin class and 

say, "Well, I am not 15 pounds lighter, so exercise clearly doesn't work."  If you want to improve an artistic skill, you can't spend an hour watching YouTube tutorials and say, "Well, I am not any better at this now than I was an hour ago, so these tutorials are garbage."  We need to recognize that nothing in your brain changes instantly.  Trying something one time will not allow you to adapt or even to accurately judge whether you are good at (or like) what you are doing.  

Don't just say, "I tried it once.  It didn't work."  Keep doing it until it becomes an automatic routine in your life.

You Can't Save Up

For those of you who read my posts for insights about education, this one doesn't connect, at least not in any explicit way.  These are just the thoughts I'm having as I prepare for camp.

For the next several days, I will be preparing for Royal Family Kids Camp.  Let me just tell you that camp preparation is no joke.  Unlike other travel, where you might stay in a hotel with toiletries provided and the ability to quickly pick up something you forgot, when packing for camp, one must consider EVERYTHING they will need to live for a week.  In addition to your clothes, you have to pack your sheets and towels and a clock.  Depending on where you are staying, you might even have to pack your own shower curtain.  That's before you consider the packing you need to do your camp job.  For counselors, that means cabin decorations and camper gifts.  For activities and program directors, that may involve pulling a trailer of supplies.  The nurses need to think about how many bandaids, gloves, and bee sting kits they will need, not to mention an organizational system for all of the kids' meds.  And don't get me started on the food service people - their preplanning is unreal.  In that regard, I've got it easy with my camera and adjacent accessories, my computer (with charger, dongle, and bag), and a notebook for all of the reminders (which camper wants a shot of them riding a horse, what each twin is wearing today so speed later identification, reminders of what to pick up on the WalMart run).  As I said, packing for a camp is a little more intense than packing for a vacation.

There are things, however, that we can't prepare for in getting ready for camp.  The heat is intense.  After all, it is the 2nd week of July in Eastern NC.  We are outside for much of the day, and we are very active.  Whether fishing, horseback riding, swimming, running relays, riding bikes, or doing archery, we spend a lot of time in the hot sun.  When we go inside, air conditioning has been running for hours to keep down the humidity.  (Did you know, by the way, that Willis Carrier invented air conditioning for the purpose of humidity reduction in magazine printing, and the lowering of the temperature was just a side effect?  Sorry for the sidetrack.  It's compulsive.  I've been out of school for a month, so I haven't taught anything in a while.)  Anyway, you come in from the heat and immediately start evaporating sweat, resulting in feeling incredibly cold.  For years, I have said that someone could make a fortune if they could invent a lotion that would remove heat from you while you are outside and store it to be released back into your skin when you went inside.  Or, wouldn't it be great if God had just designed us that way in the first place?  He could have.  It was within his power to give us the ability to store excess heat for later use.  He chose not to, so we can't save up.

The other thing I can't prepare for in all of my planning and packing is sleep.  When I was a counselor, the job was emotionally and physically intense, but it was the only week of the year when I actually slept 8 hours every night because I slept when the kids slept, and "lights-out" was at 9 o'clock.  Now, that I am the photographer, my week is very different.  The daytime part of the job is easier.  It's mostly running around taking pictures and organizing what needs to be sent for printing then going to Walmart twice a day to drop off and pick up pictures.  The majority of my work, however, takes place at night.  Those prints need to be identified and sorted because each of our fifty campers receives a photo album at the end of the week with at least 24 pictures in it.  The pictures are placed in the books.  I make a list of the kids we are low on, so my photography partner and I can make sure to aim at them more the next day.  I have a checklist to make sure that I have at least one photo of each child in the pool, with grandma and grandpa, doing an activity, singing or reading the Bible, etc.  If they have a sibling, we make sure to get a shot of them together.  (Man, my 18 years as a yearbook advisor comes in handy for this job.)  Anyway, all of this leads to progressively less sleep each night of the week, and occasionally an all-nighter on Thursday because that's when the bulk of the video is made.  I wish I could prepare for this by spending this week saving up sleep.  If I could, I would sleep an extra hour or two each night of the two weeks leading up to camp and save up on the rest.  God could have made us work that way, but he chose not to.

Why did God make us this way?  Why wouldn't He allow us to save up on heat or sleep or any of the other things you might wish to stock up on.  I think it is to teach us two things:  wisdom and reliance on Him.  The book of Proverbs is filled with wise advice about how to live prudently, including the balance of work and rest.  It's not a big deal that I get very little sleep for a week, but it would be foolish to live that way on a regular basis.  If it were possible to store up sleep, we might be tempted to live in unwise ways when it comes to rest (even with the way it is, we tend to make foolish sleep decisions).  

The second purpose, I think, is to teach us dependence.  God wants us to resist our natural inclination to rely on ourselves and our own understanding.  When he provided manna for the nation of Israel during their forty years of wandering in the desert, they were commanded to only gather the amount they needed for the day except for the day before the Sabbath when they were allowed to collect a double amount.  If they even tried to save up, the manna would spoil and be worthless the next day (except that the double portion collected pre-Sabbath miraculously did not spoil).  God was training His people not to hoard His provision because they might come to believe that they were the source of provision rather than Him.  I would imagine in the first weeks of wandering, it must have been frightening to get up each morning and look outside the tent, wondering whether you would eat that day.  That first Sabbath, after having seen extra manna spoil for six nights in a row, they might have worried that they would wake up to rotten food.  Yet, every day, God was faithful.  I wonder if ten years in, they felt secure or still wondered if today would be the day the manna didn't come.  (I do know that at some point they become so accustomed to being miraculously fed that they complained about it and asked for something different.  God help us - humans are prone to rebel, aren't we?)  For forty years, God gave them what they needed and no more.  Because they wandered for four decades, they had to teach the next generations the rules and show them that the rules were there because of God's faithfulness to them.

Next week, when I finally fall into bed at 2:30AM on Wednesday night, I will pray for the few hours of sleep I will get to be deeply restful (and that it will come quickly as it is difficult to turn my brain off).  When I get up and make the morning run to Walmart, I will pray that He gives me the energy to do the work He has put before me that day.  I remember writing about this during the days of the pandemic when I was using every bit of energy I had, but camp serves as an annual reminder to rely on Him because, if he has given you a task, he will also enable you to complete that task.