Directions Test

A silly assignment that many educators like to use—occasionally even with parents—is a directions test (found here). The first line instructs the reader to “read everything before doing anything,” but most people skip by that and begin working on the tasks outlined on the rest of the page. It leads to some goofy activities that students could have avoided if they had in fact read to the bottom and found that all you really had to do was put your name on the paper and hand it to the teacher. We like to plow right into work, but as believers the first directive is to pray. If Jesus gave you an assignment, would your first thought be to pray, or would you start doing other actions? Before Jesus ascended to heaven, he told the disciples that they would bring his message to all of the world, and this is what the disciples did: “Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day’s journey away. And when they had entered, they went up to the upper room, where they were staying, Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot and Judas the son of James. All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers” (Acts 1:12–14).