Theme weeks coming up!

By Elizabeth Prata

We started in-person school Friday and I’m so happy. I love being with the kids and I love my school. I used to teach elementary school in Maine and since I’m a native New Englander, all my school life whether as a certified teacher, substitute, or student, I was used to the Post-Labor day start. We had a September to June schedule. I’ve never gotten used to the South’s August to May schedule, but I love the job anyway.

I’m a teacher’s aide now, called a para-professional or support staff, and that suits me. I leave the handling of the educational planning, classroom teaching, the responsibility, and the meetings and paperwork to the teacher I support. I’m like the grandma of the classroom, I come in, handle the support things, teach a small group, do some hall duties or lunch duty, teach some more small groups and do interventions, and then I go home free from the inevitable teacher paperwork, correcting, and parent phone calls.

When I get home I usually make a pot of tea and have a snack. Then I attend to Bible stuff, reading, research, and preparing the blog and podcast for the next day’s publishing. In the evening I either watch something or I read.

With the first full week of school starting Monday, it usually is physically tiring and mentally draining. It takes me a couple of weeks to regain my equilibrium from having been off work for the last 70 days and in a mode of, shall we say, totally relaxation. We really do go from 0 to 100 mph in one day. Going from a completely closed and silent school, with two buildings, 60 employees and 500 students, into full swing takes an incredible amount of work, and you would not believe all the moving parts that have to mesh to make it all work. It’s an incredible feat that we love doing but is tiring.

To that end, I decided to have the next 3 weeks be themed and intersperse some new essays and some revived past essays. I have 5500 essays here and I’ve been writing for 13 years daily. There’s a lot of material. Not all of it needs republishing, of course, some early essays are more current news oriented and would not make a lot of sense now. But still, I know I’ll be exhausted when I get home from school and posting some older essays with newer ones will be helpful for me.

I scroll past the news headlines on Twitter every day (that’s all I need to see where this world is going) and it’s completely depressing. I believe we’re losing our country, I believe the end is closer than ever (it always is, every day that passes) and I sense that a lot of brothers and sisters are sad, too. Some, maybe, are having a hard time dealing with it.

So next week will be “HEAVEN WEEK.” Let’s remind ourselves of what we are pursuing, what we have to look forward to, what Jesus is preparing for us. I think that will be a breath of fresh air. It’ll be biblical, everything I can find in the Bible about heaven and our eternal destination of holiness, purity, and peace. We all need it.

Then the second week will be “DISCERNMENT WEEK”. I have done a lot of research yielding conclusions about various popular teachers or organizations. These essays have been helpful in the past and when I re-publish them may be helpful again. Some people have been asking me, so, this is my way to answer those inquiries.

The third week will be “GOSPEL WEEK”. It will include some essays on our depravity, never a ‘fun’ subject, but the Gospel is bad news first, then good news! I think sometimes we can get away from the simplicity of the Gospel, and forgetting the reason we are here on earth. Let’s refresh ourselves with the old news that is good news, Gospel and our need for Christ. That week will focus on Him, our position in front of Him unsaved and saved.

I’m going to the G3 Conference in Atlanta for three days at the end of September, and I’m so excited. It is great to be looking forward to something so great, and I’m going with the same two young ladies I went with last year. It’s joyful to be with young women who are so excited about Jesus and so dedicated to pursuing Him for His glory. Women like these really make my Titus 2 discipleship very easy and a huge blessing.

Meanwhile, there is a routine to get back into. It kind of gets harder every year…but that’s OK. I have Jesus to help me and there is no better help than that!