A More Personal Parable of a Distracted Student

Like a child I sit and wait for instruction with an assignment laying on the desk in front of me. I fiddle with my papers and twiddle my thumbs.  Look out the window, whistle quietly to myself, or zone out.  I nod off, I think about the other things I could be doing; whatever it is, I just keep sitting, waiting for a word from the teacher to tell me what to do.  I haven't been paying attention for a while now, so I don't really even know for what I am listening. But I keep listening because I've been told over and over, listen to the teacher and she will tell you what to do.

After an hour, as I am bored to death waiting for direction, I lay my head down on the desk and give up on the assignment before me.  SMACK! The teacher slaps my desk with the ruler as I suck in my drool and snap to a drowsy attention.  Now that she has my attention she squats down next to my desk and says, "Nathan, what are you doing?"

     "Waiting for you to tell me what to do," I respond confidently.

     She calmly reassures me, "But Nathan, I already told you what you must do for me. I explained how to do it."

     "When did you do that?" I begin to stammer losing confidence.  "I listened for you to explain; I sat quietly--now I did lose focus every once in a while.  Did I miss it then?  Did you tell me while I wasn't listening?  I heard that last class you told some of the students how to do it individually.  Weren't you going to do that for me too?"

     "Oh Nathan, I spoke the words to my classroom assistant and she wrote them right on the assignment paper.  I even wrote out a syllabus so that you would know the big picture--how all of these little assignments fit into the overall goals for the class.  I told you my expectations, and one of them is to read what I had written for you.  Those are my words directly even though the assistant wrote them.  Why do I need to say it again to each person individually if I have already had it written down for you to read?  Don't you think that sitting there with the directions in your lap without reading them is a silly thing to do?"  She continued with compassion, "Don't be discouraged Nathan, you might be a little bit behind everyone else, but you still have time, just start reading my directions and follow them.  It is that simple. You can do it."

מִנְחָה֙