The start of a new school year began this week and it is always an adventure. The incoming sixth graders enter a new school with a completely different schedule, see hundreds of new faces, and learn how to use a combination lock for the first time. It can certainly be a stressful and anxious day. It is understandable, as even I still feel some butterflies in my stomach on the first day. Even though it may be a little unnerving for them, it is also an exciting time. They get to meet many new teachers, new friends, and new challenges both socially and academically. It has become a new beginning.
As the year progresses, they will become comfortable and learn to open up more. They will build new friendships, get involved in more activities, and grow in knowledge. By the end of the school year, they will have conquered sixth grade and become ready for the next level. After eighth grade, they will begin the process all over again as they enter high school. I count it a blessing to witness some of these young students make the transition each year and also be a small part of their learning process.
Facing challenges in our lives can truly resemble that new school year experience. Let’s face it, life can be filled with stress and anxiety. Have you lost a loved one? Have you struggled at a job or lost one? Have you experienced a fractured relationship with a friend? These situations, along with countless others, could affect our daily walk with God. It is time to hit that reset button and get back to the right perspective. It is time for a new beginning.
1 Peter 1:3-9
3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, 5 who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. 7 These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. 8 Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, 9 for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
Charles Spurgeon describes the words of Peter like this: “Indeed, it is the honor of faith to be tried. Shall any man say, ‘I have faith, but I have never had to believe under difficulties’? Who knows whether thou hast any faith? Shall a man say, ‘I have great faith in God, but I have never had to use it in anything more than the ordinary affairs of life, where I could probably have done without it as well as with it’? Is this to the honor and praise of thy faith? Dost thou think that such a faith as this will bring any great glory to God, or bring to thee any great reward? If so, thou art mightily mistaken.”
No matter what curveballs life throws at us, may we always remember the living hope that Jesus Christ provides for us in the redemptive work on Golgotha. May we always walk in that truth. May we always remember it is a new beginning.
~Wayne Errig