Back to School

Pause

It’s a new school year. Time to get back to the books. Time for thinking and learning.

Where is my mind today? In a place of curiosity, faith, understanding, and love? Or preoccupied with fear, doubt, injury, and hatred?

I open my mind and invite God’s love to move through me.

Listen

Don’t be conformed to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you can figure out what God’s will is—what is good and pleasing and mature.

Romans 12:2

Think

Traditions are important. There is safety and security in the way we’ve seen things done before. We can rely on past experiences, so we don’t keep making the same mistakes. However, if we stop coming up with new ideas and always defer to the past, we stagnate (and forget why we started doing it that way in the first place). Valuable traditions risk becoming hollow rituals. So where do we get new ideas?

Think about great artists, musicians, philosophers, engineers, scientists, and mathematicians – all inventors, revolutionaries, agents of change (like Jesus in his time). Their ideas and experiments come from an internal place of curiosity, wonder, and play. It is a place that’s close to God. You can reach this sacred place of renewal and transformation by developing your personal relationship to God. There are many ways to do this, and we can start simply by reciting the Lord’s Prayer…

Alex Flannagan

Pray

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins
As we forgive those who sin
against us.
Save us from the time of trial
And deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power, and the
glory are yours
Now and forever. Amen

Go

Go unashamed and proudly, for God made you you.

You are a divine instrument of God’s peace.

No need to overthink it – go and play your song!