For some of you, school starting marks a big shift in life. For teachers, it means the end of a well-deserved vacation. For parents, it means getting your kids back out of the house. For students, it means getting back into the swing of getting up early and into the mindset of learning. For others of you, the start of school means very little, as there are no school-aged kids in your household to consider.
Regardless of which category you fall into, I know there are children in your life that you care about, whether it be nieces and nephews, grandchildren, or children of friends and neighbors. For these children, do you realize they spend over 1,000 hours of their year in school? That’s not even counting sports or other extra-curricular activities. Outside of sleeping, that’s probably more time than they spend doing anything else. It stands to reason, then, that the school is going to have a huge impact upon their life.
While we cannot directly control what kind of influence the school has on the children we love, we can do two things. First, we can pray for our teachers and students. Let’s pray that God would strengthen the adults that impact our children’s lives, so they could guide the students in the right direction. Secondly, we can talk to our children about what’s going on at school. Is there a problem? Let’s discover it and help them work through it. Is there a question? Let us be the ones to help discover an answer. Is there a reason to celebrate? Let us celebrate with them. May God use this school year to shape all of us, children and adults alike.