Back to School

Pause

Paul writes to the Colossians: “Take off the old human nature with its practices and put on the new nature…”

Pause – to consider what God is inviting you to hear and to see today.

Pause to consider what God is inviting you to “put on.”

Listen

Lord, you have been our help, generation after generation. Before the mountains were born, before you birthed the earth and the inhabited world— from forever in the past to forever in the future, you are God.

Psalm 90:1-2

Think

Does it help you to know that you are not alone? Feeling alone takes different forms: whether that is feeling scared or lost, sad or excited (maybe about something that other people are complaining about… say… school?). There is an opportunity to join your feelings, whatever those may be, with those of MANY who surround you.

There are two things that you can be sure of: others feel the way you feel, and you are not alone. God is with you. God has been there “generations after generations.” God gives us each other to remind us that we are not in this life by ourselves.

And God gives us this reminder, in the words of this psalm, that God continues to be God. To help us. To see us. To remind us that we move into this new day together.

Look around you: in the hallways of your school, at your friends, at your family, your teammates or neighbors. Everyone feels alone. Be the reminder that God is with them. And remember that God is with you.

Gina Yeager-Buckley

Pray

Open my eyes and open my heart, O God. Help me to see and feel and understand as I begin this day, this week, this school year, that I am not alone. When I feel alone speak to me in my heart, through my mind – and remind me to do the same for others. Amen.

Go

Go – to put on love. To practice love. To offer the love that God gives to you to the world around you.