The Gift of Guidance

I love the beginning of a new school year. I relish the cooler weather. I enjoy buying new pencils and notebooks, new boxes of crayons or markers, reams of notebook paper, new books, and, if I am fortunate, a new bookcase. Traditionally in our family, we gave our children a small amount of cash at the beginning of each school year. Then we took them to Wal-Mart or Office Depot and allowed them to spend their money on whatever additional supplies they wanted. It was such fun to watch them perusing the mechanical pencils, satchels (backpacks, these days), and three-ring binders in order to pick just the right ones. One year I was so excited about beginning the new year that I bought lunch boxes for the children. Well, we used them for field trips and picnics, so I felt justified.

In following our family tradition, I would like to give each of you a gift for the “beginning of the year.”

• If I could give you the perfect philosophy of education for your family, with all the accompanying curriculum that would precisely meet the individual needs of each of your children, I would do it.
• If I could give you a housekeeper and a cook for the year, I would do it.
• If I could pay for you to have a personal assistant who would file all your papers, clear the dining room table every day after school time, grocery shop for you, and grade papers, I would do it.
• If I could plan all your menus with luscious meals and stock the freezer for you, I would do it.
• If I could give you the energy of ten young women, I would do it.

But you know I cannot, and the One who could do all of those things, probably will not. God has called us to home educate and has promised to equip us to do the job. Why does He not give us all of the above aids as standard equipment? Because we might not continue to depend upon Him. We might stop clinging as tightly to Him as we have to do. Unfortunately, it is often desperation that drives us to our knees, when He wants us to be there in attitude daily, walking and communing with Him while we work to fulfill the calling He has placed on our lives.

He Sees the Big Picture

We need to understand that if He does not give us the standard equipment we would prefer, it is because of His great love for us. Honestly! He sees the big picture. He knows that homeschooling is not just about the children. It is about changing moms and dads into who He wants us to be, guiding us to become lifelong learners, helping us to be more like Him. I look back over our twenty-five year homeschool journey and see that God did a good work in spite of my ignorance, my failings, my weaknesses. The journey seems so short now that all my children are grown.

There is one theme, though, that rings true throughout the years, one thread woven through every day: God’s love for me and for my children. The more I understood His love for me, the more secure I became and the more confident I was that He would guide me as I guided my children. So many times I felt as though I was a potter required to mold the lives of my children through the decisions I was making. I was clumsy and so fearful I would ruin their lives, cause them to miss their potential, and hinder their opportunities. Understanding His love more clearly helped me to see that His hands were covering mine, guiding me as I submitted to His love. He was the Master Potter molding their lives through my hands. Did I blunder? You bet. Looking back, are there things I would do differently now? Absolutely. But as my relationship with my heavenly Father has grown deeper, so my relationships with my children have grown because I could love them more in the way He loves me. And I am still learning how to love as He loves.

Nothing Will Ever Be the Same

I pray that this year you and your children will truly begin to know the breadth, the length, the height and the depth of the love of God through Jesus Christ. For when you understand His love, nothing will ever be the same for you again. You will look at your children and your homeschool differently. You will see your husband in a new light; trials, even crises will be seen differently when you understand God’s great love toward you.

It is through Christ that God reaches toward us and offers to us the fullness of His love. God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. His love is so complete, He could never love you more than He does right now. His love is pure, whole, perfect, unconditional. If you have a stellar homeschool year, God will not love you more than He does right now, because he loves you completely. His love is boundless. His love for each of you cannot be contained. Grab hold of this truth. Let it affect you as never before.

As you personally grasp a deeper understanding of God’s love, the impact upon how you think will be powerful and may initiate a life-changing trickle effect. You will be able to trust God to guide you as you lead and direct your children. And you will find yourself loving your children more in the way God loves you.

This hymn by F. M. Lehman (3rd verse by Meir Ben Isaac Nehorai, Jewish poet of A.D. 1050), a reminder of God’s love, is a gift for each of you at the beginning of this school year.

The Love of God

The love of God is greater far than tongue or pen can ever tell;
It goes beyond the highest star, and reaches to the lowest hell;
The guilty pair, bowed down with care, God gave His Son to win;
His erring child He reconciled, and pardoned from his sin.

O love of God, how rich and pure! How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure—the saints’ and angels’ song!

When years of time shall pass away and earthly thrones and kingdoms fall,
When men who here refuse to pray, on rocks and hills and mountains call,
God’s love so sure shall still endure, all measureless and strong;
Redeeming grace to Adam’s race—the saints’ and angels’ song.

O love of God, how rich and pure! How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure—the saints’ and angels’ song!

Could we with ink the ocean fill and were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill and every man a scribe by trade,
To write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole, tho’ stretched from sky to sky.

O love of God, how rich and pure! How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure—the saints’ and angels’ song!

Every time you pick up a pen or pencil to write, I hope you will remember that if every stalk was a pen and the ocean was ink, it still would not be enough to record God’s love for you. And each time you hand a sheet of paper to your child, I pray you will visualize that though the scroll stretched from one horizon to the next, it could not contain the whole of the love of God for you.

“I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen”
(Ephesians 3:14-21)