itsawonderfilledlife

Today is the start of the school year, in my neck of the woods.

The slate of last year is wiped clean and the opportunity for a fresh start is available to all … the students, parents, guardians, school staff.

I love this fresh start aspect of working in a school. I love it for me, but I also love it for the students who need a fresh opportunity to show who they really are and what they are capable of accomplishing.

Isaiah 42:18 is a great verse for the start of a new school year:

“ … do not dwell on the past.
See, I am doing a new thing!”

Ah, the past. There can be tough stuff in our pasts. Stuff like failures, bad attitudes, not doing our best … and those are just some of the things in my past school year, as a staff member.

But, this verse encourages to not dwell on the past.

This is a new school year and God is doing a new thing. It is fresh, like that new lined notebook page … just like our friend Anne of Green Gables says, “it’s a new day, with no mistakes in it” (yet … but let’s not focus on the ‘yet’).

Don’t you wonder what that new thing that God might be doing? Doesn’t it encourage us to have a sense of anticipation, of waiting? It is as though we need to pause before moving ahead, because God is doing a new thing, and we need to allow him lead the way into this new year.

May this school year be blessed with an focus on new things. May we take our first steps into it, following the one who is leading the way into this new thing.