"I urge you to view your time of preparation as a calling in its own right. We live at a time when education is regarded in such a utilitarian way that it's legitimacy finally depends on its being a ticket to a job. In recent years I have seen pathetic examples of parents putting so much pressure on students to know exactly what job they expect to enter upon graduation that the students could not possibly avoid feeling guilty about taking time for an education.
Parents and advisors to young people need to stop making students feel guilty about being in a period of preparation. When God calls people to a task, he also calls them to a time of preparation. This preparation time, moreover, is as important as the performance of the task.
What should we say about the hours it takes to prepare for a sermon or Sunday school class or lecture or term paper or ball game or recital? Is this time and effort some how ignoble? Does God turn his head the other way when a person prepares? Jesus did not begin his earthly ministry until the age of thirty, living until that time as an obscure carpenter in an out-of-the-way village. We might protest: Think of all the people he could have preached to and healed between the ages of twenty and thirty.
Moses spent forty years of his life being educated in the court of Pharoah, receiving the best education his day afforded. Then he spent forty years in Midian, from a human point of view rotting away in exile, but actually being prepared for wilderness survival, the skill he needed to lead the Isrealites from Egypt to the Promised Land. According to Galatians 1:17, Paul, upon his conversion, did not at once become an evangelist. Instead, he spent three years in Arabia and Damascus being instructed in the gospel.
Learning, in whatever form, is the student's calling. It is the arena within which you display good stewardship or lack of it. Several years ago I entered my office to find the following letter that had been slipped under my door:
I do not know where to begin, except I am preparing for the next test. I tried reading late into three
successive evenings and found myself moving in and out of consciousness. I fell behind early after the
first exam. This year I am heavily involved in the community. I am trying to wean myself from college
life (not studying). College is just a transition period (a period of preparation). This term I have four
reading courses, 20-30 hours in a ministry, a job, and meetings almost every night, and two speaking
engagements a week.
What was this person's problem? An inadequate view of the student's calling. And where did he get it? From his pastor, his family, some of his fellow students, and a general atmosphere that denigrates the idea of intellectual preparation for one's eventual vocation in life.
During your college years, being a student is your vocation. That occupation involves more than studying, but studying is by definition its major ingredient. Why not look up the word student in the dictionary?"
- Leland Ryken
from: http://www.amazon.com/Liberal-Arts-Christian-Jeffry-Davis/dp/1433523949/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1364578981&sr=8-1&keywords=liberal+arts+for+the+christian+life
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