Back to School...Back to Reality

For a teacher, like myself, summer is a time of fantastic freedoms. Freedom from bells, schedules, paperwork, deadlines, parents, administrators, students. Now, in a few days my freedom will be over as I begin yet another school year, my 20th to be exact. There are things I do like about going back to school. New books, fresh unsharpened pencils, blank spiral notebooks and smiling new students. It is a time to begin again that quest for knowledge and the ability to use it well. It also means for me, a reality check that my time is really not my own. It is a gift from God, and I need to use it for His purposes, rather than my own. Within my sphere of teaching I have always found His purposes to be manifested each school year in different students. You know the really, really, needy ones. Sometimes they are the outcasts, at other times they are the popular and gifted ones. And sometimes, in fact, most of the time, they are children who are suffering from neglect or abuse at home. My boss (THE BOSS), I feel has called me to minister his love and discipline to these needy ones. It is my call to reality. "Has not the potter a right claim over the clay?" (Rom. 9:21)