The work Trinitas requires can put a strain on parents and students, but, as uncomfortable as it is to hear, that’s the way it ought to be. School should be hard. Why? Because hard work brings a profit (Prov. 14:23).

Think of something good. Is it easily acquired? Now something beautiful… Now true… The world our Father created yields its fruit only to laborers like the ant in Proverbs 6. Students who are allowed to grumble about memorizing an additional five vocabulary words or to roll their eyes when required to show all of their math work are being prepared to live life lazily.

If we want students to take pleasure in a lifelong search for wisdom, they need training in how to work. They get some of this training naturally. Fifth grade is more challenging than fourth grade. But it is not enough to have students advance to the next textbooks, start using planners, and pack their own lunches. These appropriate challenges are not the only ones. Students need to be equipped to wrestle with their sins and shortcomings. They need encouragement to say about their sins the same things that God says about them.

Preparing students to entrench themselves in the work of searching for wisdom means teaching them what a pickaxe looks like and teaching them to use it with all their might! Sometimes the pickaxe looks like a protractor or dictionary, and sometimes it looks like prayer or confession.

Students who spend their days studying Latin and writing research papers in addition to learning how to love God, love their neighbors, and root out their sins will fall into their beds tired. That is how it should be. Put simply, the lifelong struggle for wisdom is difficult, but diligently running with endurance is beautiful.