A Turning Point

A few weeks ago I was in a class and had to help them with an autobiography. The sticky spot was dealing with 10-12 year-olds and teaching them to understand what a turning point is in your life. For an adult it is easy: a marriage, a death, a birth, a graduation…but for kids it is harder.

We talked about Christmas, a new school year, a new teacher, a new school, a sibling being born. These are all good but never something that stands out to kids as life changing. 

Later in the class, one of the students mentioned that she is dyslexic and that the letters jump on the page - or on the computer screen - when she reads so she takes her time when she works. I had in my backpack a set of clear, tinted rulers just for this purpose: green, pink and blue. I showed them to her and she found that the pink one worked the best. The letters stopped moving. After a few minutes she said, "This is a turning point in my life!" 

Later in the day I saw her coming from another class and she repeated, "This is a turning point in my life!"

As I pondered this over the next few days, I was reminded of Nicodemus in John 3. "How can someone be born when they are old? Surely they cannot enter into their mother's womb again?" 

In that time period Jews used the expression "to be born again" to indicate a conversion of a gentile to Judaism, or changing  a strongly held view like a Pharisee becoming a Sadducee, or vice versa.

Nicodemus is saying, I am a Pharisee, as was my father and grandfather etc. Do you want me to change in my old age? Jesus is saying, change not to something that you already are aware of, but to something spiritual, something you have not experienced before. You need a turning point in your life.

We all experience turning points in our lives. Sometimes they are small adjustments; sometimes they are major shifts in the way we think and live. We can expect positive turning points because we serve the God of all hope. (Romans 15:13). Hope is the expectation of good things happening to us, because of what Jesus has done.