WHAT FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL PICS TEACH THE CHURCH...
Last night while on the phone with her sister (who is an elementary art teacher in Marathon, NY) Erin noted that for us, back-to-school season will last for about a month because of all our friends around the country posting the requisite 'first-day-of-school' stuff on their Facebook walls. Listening to Erin's side of the conversation, I started thinking about those photos and realized that we, too, caught a glimpse of this year's first-day-of-school picture for our church. How's that, you say?
Well, think about...
Every first-day-of-school pic has at it's root a sense of promise and anticipation;
Through the events of this weekend, starting with our Deep Clean Day where we cleaned out and spruced up the children's wing to all the events of yesterday (mentioned above - and I didn't even mention Disciple) we tasted the promise of what is yet to come...Every first-day-of-school pic provides a baseline of measurement for the year;
One of the great things about the first-day-of-school pics is being able to look at the previous year's and seeing how much has changed just in the span of the year - I can't wait to see what God has in store for us when we gather for back-to-school Sunday next year...
Every first-day-of-school pic also has an undercurrent of uncertainty;
While we have many lofty goals and dreams, there's also a twinge of anxiety about the unknown - after all, there is much beyond our control despite our best efforts (thus the touching story of the first-grader in our church who told his father that he wasn't worried about his first day of first grade because 'he prayed about it the night before...'
Every first-day-of-school pic involves more than meets the eye;
As one mother told me yesterday, her first-grade son said he didn't need her to walk him to his class, and she said, 'It's not for you I'm walking you to class - it's for me.' While it's easy for us to focus solely only what is seen, there are many more stakeholders in our next year than just us - namely the community around us to and with whom we have been called by God through Christ - like the mother who walked her child to class, there are many others besides us that have a stake in how we will conduct ourselves over the next year of our life.
Needless to say, like so many children and parents across the fruited plain this month, we've gotten off to a start that screams potential. May we always be mindful of the fact that every day is a day of promise offered to us solely by the grace of God personified in Christ empowered by the Holy Spirit, and live in such a way that when we gather for the first-day-of-school picture next year we can see growth (visible and invisible) through our trust in and obedience to the God without whom we have and are nothing.
See You Sunday!
Lamar