Talk to any kid long enough and you realize that their world is controlled by the school calendar. They’ll surely know what month and day it is. They can tell you what’s coming up in the near future. But, they’ll do so in light of the academic calendar. It’s fall semester. Or, it’s just 2 weeks until Christmas break. Or, 45 days until summer vacation. They live those 12 or 13 years with their lives punctuated by semesters, exams, and breaks.

Talk to the parent of any school age child and the same thing is true. Family vacation can’t happen until school is out. You don’t schedule a dinner party on a school night. You don’t get to have any fun until they get their homework done. You might be 20 years past graduation but the school calendar sets your dates.

I live in that world as well. Not only am I the parent of two school age children, I work in the academic world. While I enjoyed my summer off, the first day of school always loomed just over the horizon like a dispensational prediction of the second coming. The main difference was that I knew for a fact this day was coming on August 19.

So, here we are. Life as we know it is really just getting back in order. It’s the first day of school.

As I dropped my kids off at their respective schools this morning, I was reminded of the fact that the school calendar does control our lives to a great extent. Its pace and rhythm becomes our heartbeat, our metronome, our taskmaster. Yet, there’s something familiar and therefore comfortable about that fact. We worked hard last year and we’ve played hard this summer. We’ve had our season of rest and now it’s back to work. We need the summer so that the fall and spring semesters can be fruitful.

We shouldn’t be surprised that we find the school calendar so comforting. We’re wired that way, so to speak. What the school calendar does for us, giving us a time to work and a time to rest, is exactly what God did for us with his calendar. He’s given us 6 days to work and then a day of rest. We have a sabbath to focus on God, to recuperate from our labors, and to prepare for the next week’s efforts.

The day of rest is not only a highly anticipated day off, it is a day that is much needed. God knew what we were going to require physically to operate at maximum capacity. Therefore, he created the sabbath for us. We work and then we rest. Then we work again. When we try to skip that day of rest our workmanship ultimately suffers. Those 24 hours or that weekend or that week away from work are necessary respites intended to refuel and reenergize us. God made us that way.

Thus, it’s only natural that we long and wish for summer vacation like a ten year old sitting in social studies. On the flip side, however, it’s also natural for us to long to get back to work, to exercise our gifts, to do all things for the glory of God. In addition to “thank God it’s Friday,” we ought to be saying “thank God it’s Monday.” After all, this is the day that the Lord has made. Let us be glad and rejoice in it.

Thank God it’s the first day of school!

This entry is filed under The Believer.

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