We don’t often talk about teaching that way. We talk about standards, assessments, curriculum, and benchmarks. We measure progress in percentages and grade books. But long before any of that matters, there is a question that quietly waits beneath every school day: Am I loving them well?

The Apostle Paul didn’t write 1 Corinthians 13 with a classroom in mind. But when I read it as a teacher — when I hold it up like a mirror and let it speak into the work I do — I find that it reframes everything.

And I find it interesting that the King James Bible doesn’t use the word love here at all. It uses charity. That word carries weight. Charity is not a feeling that comes and goes with your mood. It is a deliberate, costly, others-centered act. Sound familiar? That is teaching.

You can be brilliant. You can have the most creative lessons, the most engaging delivery, the most dynamic presence in the room. You can know your content inside and out.

But Paul says that without charity, it is nothing but “sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.”

I have had days where I delivered what I thought was a masterful lesson — and yet a child sat in the back of my room carrying something heavy that I didn’t even notice. My words were eloquent. My heart wasn’t fully in the room.

I want to tell you about a girl I’ll call Jenny.

Jenny was bright, eager, and one of the most conscientious students I’d ever taught. But fractions? They were her wall. No matter how many times we approached the concept, it wouldn’t stick — and I could see the frustration building in her. Then one day, something happened that was completely out of character for her. She cheated.

I knew immediately that this wasn’t a dishonesty problem. It was a desperation problem. She wasn’t trying to get away with something — she was a child drowning, grabbing for anything she could reach.

So I took her aside. We talked. I found a tutoring resource online tailored to the way she processed things. I looped in her parents so we were all pulling in the same direction. And then we waited — and worked — and waited some more.

The day it finally clicked, I saw it on her face before she ever said a word. Her eyes lit up with something that went beyond math. It was the look of a child who had stopped believing a lie about herself.

Kindness doesn’t mean letting everything slide. It means that even your correction comes wrapped in dignity — because every child in your room was made in the image of God.

This one hits close to home for those of us in faith-based education. We are not just teaching facts. We are teaching truth. We are pointing young minds toward a God who is the author of all knowledge — science, history, language, mathematics — all of it His.

When a student’s eyes light up with understanding, that is not just an academic moment. That is a sacred one.

We rejoice in the truth because truth matters. What we put in front of our students shapes how they see the world — and how they see the God who made it.

This is the verse I come back to on the hard days.

The days when the lesson falls flat. When the student who was making such progress takes three steps back. When you wonder if anything you’re doing is actually getting through.

Charity endureth.

You will teach a child, pour into them, pray over them — and send them out into the world trusting that what was planted will one day grow. That is a posture of faith, not just pedagogy.

Teaching Is Ministry

I want to finish by telling you what happened to Jenny.

That little girl who couldn’t grasp fractions? She went on to become the top math student in her class — every year, all the way through high school and into college. She excelled so much that she was elected as a peer counselor, helping other students through the very subject that once made her want to give up.

She earned her Bachelor of Science degree with honors. She is now in medical school, on her way to becoming a doctor. In the window between graduation and her first day of med school, she took a job as an elementary school teacher.

One day, we were talking and she told me about a student in her class who was struggling — and how she had slowed down, sat with that child, found resources, and refused to give up on them. She said she remembered. She remembered what it felt like when someone believed in her before she believed in herself.

I sat with that for a long time.

Because here is the part that still takes my breath away: the reason I ever took that extra time with Jenny is because of what was done for me. A teacher once saw me struggle with fractions and chose to slow down. He made sure I got it. That one act of charity planted something in me that grew into a teaching philosophy — and that philosophy reached Jenny — and Jenny carried it into her own classroom.

Three generations. One act of love.

That is what it means to teach as a mission. Whether you stand in front of a classroom in a school building, gather your children around a kitchen table, or pour into young lives in any capacity — you are a minister. You have been placed in the lives of these young people on purpose, for a purpose.

The world needs teachers who don’t just educate minds but who love souls.

So let 1 Corinthians 13 be more than a wedding Scripture for you. Let it be your teaching philosophy. Let it be the standard you return to when the year gets long and the grace runs thin.

Because charity never faileth. And the seeds you plant today? You may never see the harvest — but somewhere down the line, a child you loved well will sit across from another struggling human and choose to slow down.

And the mission will continue.