It is the first day of school in our community. I can sense the emptiness of the neighborhood. It is quieter, fewer cars driving by our house, fewer kids walking or biking by, no happy screams of little girls running around the yard. Of course it is also 59 degrees and there is a gale force wind threatening to blow the house down so it would probably be quiet today anyway but, still, I know, the houses are all empty around me.
(I will not discuss the fact that I am wearing jeans, a long sleeved shirt, socks, slippers and my house sweater because I have sent that part of my brain to my happy place and am pretending this is temporary and doesn't bother me at all.)
The precious folly of my youth is now a junior in high school. How, HOW did that happen? He amazes and humbles me every day as I watch him grow. Juniors and Seniors don't start school until noon the first day so they can prepare the sophomores in the morning for the high school experience. This gave me a chance to really spend some time with him on the first day of school and allowed him to finish that final summer reading assignment before he had to rush off to turn it in. Hopefully not a sign of things to come this year...oh who am I kidding, it is exactly a sign of things to come.
I usually choose a verse or something for school but hadn't really thought about it this year. I guess I figured we had a family verse instead and I would just pray that over him. But when I started thinking of it this morning Romans 8:37 came to me, "In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us." Conquerors. Somehow that word seems so fitting for going into his junior year.
This is the year all his friends (and soon hopefully him) are driving, he will hopefully be getting a year round job and with all that comes much more independence and many more temptations and decisions to be made without his parents present to help him make the best choices. When temptations come I want him to remember he is "More than a conqueror through Christ Jesus who loves Jake" (v37) the scriptures goes on to say and I want Jake to be "convinced that, neither death nor life, angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate Jake from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."(v 38-39) And earlier in the passage you hear the battle cry for the 11th grade warrior going off to conquer the temptations that await him, "if God is for me, who can be against me?" (v 31)
That is my prayer for Jake during this school year.
But, since he usually has to be to school by 7:30, starting tomorrow I will probably be praying it from bed.
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