Yearly Obsession

This might seem strange but I love this time of year!! I love to go to office supply stores and examine each and every aisle drooling over the new types of pens and pencils offered. I stand forever looking at notebooks and folders deciding which would be best to keep things in order. Hobby Lobby and Michaels have dollar sections filled with all kinds of matching stationery items!! Heavenly! I have always loved school…I loved taking classes and I loved organizing my life into 6 perfectly divided sections of a day! The problem is that I am no longer in school nor do I still teach high school but that doesn’t stop me from going through this ritual I have observed for longer than I care to admit.

This year I began to think about why I do this. What draws me to school supplies? Is there a gene that makes me crave the smell of fresh textbooks? I don’t think so…in remembering school “startings” as a child, I remember a feeling of being able to start over…that everything I did last year (good or bad) didn’t matter. I remember thinking, “This year I am determined to make all A’s!” It all begins anew. Also, the farthest thing on my mind was my “permanent record!” (By the way, I don’t even know what happened to it…Permanent? I think not!!)

This week a part of me is craving that newness…that feeling that yesterday didn’t really matter that it all goes forward from here out. I have never gotten over my need for a new start! (Maybe that is why I bought that box of pencils and flowery files along with the coordinating folder.)

Perhaps it was the start of the school year when the scholar, Paul the Apostle wrote his letter to the Philippians! As he was talking about all the great things he had been, he added it was nothing…a complete loss compared to the greatness of Christ. Later in the same passage he says these words: “Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” Phil 3:13b-14

Forgetting what is behind doesn’t just mean the “bad things” but also the great things we have done. Don’t hold onto what you were…it is what you are that matters and what we do from here on out. Set your goal to press on toward the prize! Set your goal to please the One who has given you life!! So it is with the start of another school year…a reminder that we have a clean slate! Press on and if you need to get some new pens to help…go ahead!!!