It's School Time Again

I’m for the kids! Jesus was too, you know. He said, “let the children come unto me and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom!”

It occurred to me that our kids aren’t getting ready to go to work! They are at work! School is just as much going to work for them as punching the clock is for us. Theirs is almost an 8-hour day. And by the time they ride the bus for an hour each way, it is more than that.

Consider the environment of a school child for 12 years: The child sits in a desk, lined up in rows, with 20-30 other children. Any office with desks and secretaries that close to each other would bring a protest of violation of human space and rights! Day after day, the children sit in that same room, looking at a blackboard in front of them, or to their side. Bulletin Boards break the monotony. An American flag is to one side; a school clock is somewhere in the room; a pencil sharpener is there for all to use. There is surely a world globe, and a few other typical items. Almost the same monotonous items in every classroom for 12 years! In recent years, the addition of computers has changed a major part of the environment.

Day after day, a child raises his or her arm eagerly to answer questions the teacher may ask. Day after day, that arm is cushioned in the hand while the student waits for recognition…an arm is a heavy thing to hold! There is probably no carpet on the classroom floor. The room is most certainly not air-conditioned…sometimes overly hot…sometimes overly cold!

Consider the lines that child must go through: a line waiting for the bus, a line waiting for a drink, a line to go into the lunch room, a line in the fire drill, a line waiting for the bathroom. A child has a regimented day, perhaps not as much as years ago in the school room, but it still is: up early in the morning, be there on time, stay there, with only a few times out of the classroom for a short science class, or gym, or lunch break. And then, home at night, with the possibility of home work. And then back at it again the next day and the next and the next!

Children are not preparing for life’s work. They are doing it! And thank God, for dedicated teachers who can take this regimented day, and make it a shining star!...and can take these young laborers, and turn them into excited searchers for truth!

Jesus loved the children. He said they were not to be minimized. And we as adults must not “turn them off”. We must set them an example of conduct, and charity, and faith, and life-style in keeping with God’s will, rather than against it. It might involve prayer at school, but it most certainly must involve prayer at home.

A humble statement of contrition:
If the Church is the Body of Christ, we have
splintered it so seriously that Jesus Christ
would never recognize it, and that's the sad
story of our divisions. How can the Christian
Church proclaim peace in the world, when it
does not find peace within its own walls? I
pray for personal forgiveness, for my own
judgmentalism, as well as forgiveness for all
of us who have failed to walk in the humble
steps of the Savior.