I wrote this column several years ago when our kids were still in school. Each year, as school begins, I am always moved to republish it.

Some of you sent your kids back to school this week. And some of you who are educators are heading off to school yourselves. Our kids are all out of school – well sort of. Our daughter Emma is starting grad school this month, and our son Connor has just a year to go to get his Masters. But I still remember well all of the emotions that come with the beginning of a new school year. In some cases it meant a new school and new friends. The kids were always nervous, but also excited. The same was always true for Melissa and I, but for different reasons. Frankly, the first day of school was always hard on us.

As parents, we have a sense that we should protect our children -- protect them from danger; protect them from the cruelty of others; protect them from failure. And yet as we send them off to school, we surrender our ability to protect them. We trust others – largely strangers – to respond to them with the same caring and grace that we show them. And we pray that something of who we are as their parents will go with them. That they will remember they are loved. That they will remember who they are and whose they are. And we pray that at the end of the day, they will come back to us – not exactly the same, but having grown.

I guess that must be an inkling of what God must feel about each of us. God created us with all the potential and promise of ones who are touched by holiness. At the moment of our birth, each one of us is a bundle of holy potential. And no doubt God wants to protect us from the cruelty of the world. God wants to protect us from failure. God wants to protect us from sin. And yet, like a loving parent, God sends us off into the
world, hoping that something of our Creator will go with us. Hoping that we remember that we are loved. Hoping that we remember who we are and whose we are. And God’s deepest desire is that in the end, we will return to God, not the same, but having grown toward the potential of our creation.

It’s a paradox, isn’t it, but maybe one that is not so difficult to understand. If you are a parent, then you know. We may want to protect our kids, but deep down we know that, sheltered, they will never grow. They will never mature. And they will never achieve their true potential. Interestingly, God knows the same thing.

It’s sometimes difficult to imagine why a God who despises sin would allow us to live in a world that is filled with it. But if you’ve ever had your child run into your arms at the end of her first day of school, then you understand. When you free that which you treasure above all, and it longingly return to you … well that can only be explained in God’s terms.

It is good.

See you Sunday.