Today, I want to send good thoughts to all the people who have started the new school year, both students and teachers.
I have always enjoyed school; don’t know if it is the reunion with friends, the anticipation of something new and different or just the fresh smell of a newly sharpened pencil.
But one aspect that I know I love is the opportunity of starting new – the chance to build on past successes as well as move on from past failures. In short, I enjoy possibility.
It’s easy, as life passes by, to forget that we have this God-given opportunity to choose at least some aspect of our course of action each day.
The usual rut is not only easy to follow but can seem inevitable.
I would like to entertain the idea that every situation gives us opportunity to exercise free choice.
One thing that conspires to prevent us from recognizing this freedom is the way in which we enter this world with at least some of our personality hard wired.
For myself, I have spent too little time celebrating the package that people come with and too much time calculating how I could improve on the package.
I am reminded of one youngster who spent her first winter cleaning the snow off her boots and another six-year-old who displayed clever maneuvering so his playmate would be the one to get in the dirt to retreive the ball, thereby keeping his own shoes clean.
Regardless of where we get these divergent ideas and when they get started in our brains, it’s essential we remember to maintain the knowledge we can choose, at the very least, our own attitude toward our world.
Too often I have viewed my experience as the result of how I’ve messed up instead of as an opportunity in which God can instruct and strengthen me.
Joshua reminded the people of Israel the choice was theirs – choose to serve Jehovah or choose to serve the gods of Egypt. And the opportunity is still available to me today – choose to love and serve the God who made, sustains and saves me – or not.
Peggy Corbett is a member of the Seventh day Adventist Church.