NAPLAN results are out now. And even though it’s my job to look at that data for my school, I haven’t yet.

I was planning to do so this week just gone by, but I didn’t get there and battling what I thought at one point might be Covid (round 2), probably didn’t help.

Having marked NAPLAN earlier in the year and blogged about it (this year, and last year) the release of the results did give me pause for thought.

First pause for thought was when my principal told me the results were about to be released, at 5pm that day.

“Who wants to look at NAPLAN results at 5pm on a Friday? Who are these people!?”

That was my response.

Fortunately, I can control when I do and don’t look at the results. Perhaps controlling it a little too much, currently…? Meh (shrugs shoulders), I’ll get there.

Unfortunately, I think I was actually writing someone’s accreditation report at 5pm that Friday. If NESA don’t get me one way, they’ll get me another [insert fist shake here].

Back in May and June I was considering the idea of progress in the Christian faith alongside of my marking of NAPLAN. Now the results are out and it’s so very clear cut. You got this result in that, and that result in this.

There’s a part of my spiritual self that’s perhaps a little envious of the clarity there.

However, even in typing that, perhaps there are times when our sinful selves (full of envy and fist shakes) are happy not to have so much clarity. Ignoring sin comes easily to us. A report card on our depravity is unwelcome.

But we can’t ignore it forever. Just as NAPLAN results are released, so will God return to give us a report, not on our literacy and numeracy skills, but on ourselves.

And unlike NAPLAN results announced to be released at the specific time of 5pm on a Friday (only the Lord knows why), the ‘second coming’ has no such timestamp attached. Nor will we have any control over the timing of the results analysis.

There is a time unknown to all when we will stand before the Heavenly Judge, and that time will come like a ‘thief in the night’. His books will be open, and names will be read. We will have no control over the process.

There are no bands. Just a book of life. And the clarity is remarkable:

Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. The earth and the heavens fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books…Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.

I will get around to analysing NAPLAN results soon. Yet if that passage doesn’t convince you that there are “more things in heaven and earth, Horatio” that are more important, I don’t know what will.

Yours in wanting to go home at 5pm on Friday,

Alison