Back to School…

The kids are headed back to school. Social media is flooded with pictures of adorable kindergarteners and sulking sophomores. New backpacks, notebooks, and clothes are required to send everyone off in style.

When I was in school, my mother did not take pictures of my first day. I’m not sure why. Maybe film was more precious back then. Or maybe, because I was the last child, she decided she had all the first day of school pictures she needed. I do have vague memories of getting a new pair of dungarees, high-top tennis shoes, and a new notebook, but that was it. Oh, for first grade, I got a new mat to use when we took a nap. Letting a first grader take a nap was considered important in those days; maybe it should be brought back.

I do not recall my first-grade teacher, Mrs. Sellers, having a special treat for us. Instead, we went to work pretty quickly, learning our alphabet and numbers. School was the equivalent of our parents going to work. No one made a fuss about them going to work, so why should a special fuss be made over us?

All twelve years of basic education proceeded in that fashion. There was the inevitable dread of not knowing who your teachers would be. I remember the terror of finding out old lady Hendon would be my fourth-grade teacher. Hers was a name that struck terror into the hearts of nine-year-olds. I lived in fear that year. But for the first time, I was so fascinated by history, I read ahead to see what happened next.

The mystery of “Which teacher?” is something home-school children miss. It accelerated in high school. If you had a football coach for math, you would learn how to add six plus the extra point, but your algebra skills would be lacking. Mrs. Wolfe taught composition and made you write your first real term paper. If you had Mrs. East for speech, you had to work very hard not to have a crush on her.

When I went off to college, I drove myself, and my parents followed a day later. There were quick goodbyes after we moved my stuff into the dorm, and that was the last “first day of school” we shared. I think they were toasting each other as they pulled out of the parking lot.

When my own children came along, times had changed, and we took all the first day of school pictures, which are now buried in a box in the attic. There was a steady progression from cuteness to awkward adolescence to handsome and beautiful. My twelve years of education dragged by; theirs flew by.

Now, of course, there are no children at my house to send off to school. The first back-to-school day of our empty nest, I posted a picture of our empty porch where we took the pictures. It remains one of the saddest pictures I ever took. Our grandson is not yet old enough for school, but his time is coming. His mother, a teacher, has for weeks been prepping her room and getting ready for the frantic pace.

Where is Jesus in this? I like to think Jesus is in every page and in every lesson. He is the author of all knowledge. Think about it. It is God who gives us the gift of language, which means we can communicate and understand each other. It is God who grants the logic of math. He designed the universe so 2+2 will always equal 4. It is God who designed and called into being every living thing, including what you will dissect in Biology 101. It is God who made the elements, who arranged them into chemical compounds. It is God who made musical tones, colors, rocks, stars, the ocean, and human anatomy. There is nothing taught in school that God does not already know. You, however, still need to learn it.

If your children are still in school, it is helpful to remind them everything they are learning comes from God. Prayer may not be allowed in schools, but God is present in every class.

But this time of year may also be an invitation to you. Adults, we are told, learn on a need-to-know basis. Unfortunately, it means most of us, when we leave school, stop learning unless we need it for our job. We think we are “too cool for school.”  But you aren’t.

When Jesus invited us to consider the lilies of the field, how they are here today and gone tomorrow, wasn’t he inviting us to pay attention to our world? Wasn’t Jesus inviting us to consider his great creation and ponder what God might be trying to tell us?

Back to school might be God’s invitation to you to pause and ask, “Heavenly Father, what do I need to learn today?”