Shaping Eternity

Shaping Eternity

Those who are wise will shine as bright as the sky, and those who lead many to righteousness will shine like the stars forever.

Daniel 12:3

We have been teaching relationship courses at the university level for nearly two decades, and if there’s one thing that this experience has taught us, it is this: If you want to learn something, teach it. It’s an age-old adage that we’re reminded of nearly every time we finish a lecture.

Have you discovered this insight? If you’re a teacher, you surely have! Once you try to effectively convey principles or skills to someone else, you realize you have to become expert in those principles and skills yourself. If you want to help another couple manage conflict more effectively, for example, you can’t help but improve this aspect of your own relationship. Perhaps this is why today’s verse from Daniel notes that those who lead others to righteousness shine like the stars.

Have you considered teaching together as a couple? You don’t have to have a teaching position or be widely read or even published in order to “teach.” If you have a solid marriage and the willingness to share your own struggles and successes as a couple, you have what it takes to make a difference in another couple’s lives. And that difference doesn’t necessarily have to be made in the traditional classroom. It may come in the form of marriage mentoring, where you meet couple to couple. If you do, you’re sure to experience a boomerang effect that blesses you every bit as much as you’re blessing another couple.

Is there anyone whom the two of you could mentor together? Your willingness to walk alongside another couple is likely to shape eternity. As Henry Adams said: “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.” Or maybe you’re at a stage at which you could really benefit from another couple’s mentoring you. Is there anyone you could ask? Your own “eternity” might be shaped by the influence of someone you know. Give it some thought.

Teaching is leaving a vestige of oneself in the development of another. And surely the student is a bank where you can deposit your most precious treasures.

—Eugene P. Bertin