Daniel Dreams

It had been another difficult night as I'd battled 4 mosquitos throughout the night, waking up every couple of hours to that incessant high pitched whine. I'd managed to kill each of them but by morning I was so tired. Two nights previous, I'd had a similar experience, then the night before I'd gotten to bed too late, so I was running on little sleep. Then I remember. . .I had to prepare worship for my class.

I'm teaching Advanced Writing to 7 bright students and I always start my two-period class with worship. Usually I try to tie it in to the concepts we're learning that day but this morning my mind was too tired to think of something creative. Suddenly a thought came to mind. Why not use the Daniel studies?

I logged into my old email account and sure enough, I'd emailed a copy of the most recent studies to my previous boss shortly before I'd left so I was able to download the PDF. I scanned it quickly. Yep, chapter 1 would be perfect. They could read and then answer the questions and get practice in comprehension and critical thinking. As in any subject or language, my students tend to look for the answer in the text but my goal is to teach them to take the concept and interpret it. I sent up a quick prayer that God would bring to mind the main points of the 6+ seminars I'd sat through, since I hadn't officially taken the class where the Daniel studies were explained in detail.

Things went well. We got through one page in 15 minutes and we will finish it next week. Here's the exciting part, though. Next week, the lesson's theme is on dreams. I don't usually scan the textbook in great depth ahead of time, as each section follows a similar format, but this time I looked a little closer at the topics. It started to make me feel very uncomfortable as the book suggested interpretations for dreams and encouraged the students to apply those interpretations to their own dreams. I found the points related to actual writing and the vocabulary, but then I wondered what I could do to supplement the lesson since most of it was unusable.

Then I remembered. The Daniel studies! Chapter 2 talks specifically about dreams--Nebuchadnezzar's dream to be precise. It would fit in perfectly with the theme and we could use a Biblical topic to teach the writing concepts. I was so excited when I realized that and when I realized how the Holy Spirit gently impressed me to start the Daniel studies today so we'd be ready to discuss chapter 2 next week.

While the majority of my students are Adventists, the others are not even familiar with a Bible and struggle to find the book and chapter when I ask them to read in class, even those with a Christian background. I'm thankful for the opportunity to have them read God's Word and I will be praying that the Holy Spirit speaks to their hearts as they read and encourages them to come closer to God.