Episode II: Return of the teacher

Well, the summer holidays have gone very quickly yet again but I have been able to enjoy wonderful times. Here are the highlights:

• Going on holiday for a week to the channel island of Alderney, lots of cycling, french fort sight-seeing, good food and scrabble playing in the evenings.
• Spending a week at the 'Young adults prayer and bible conference', receiving great teaching, praying in intercession for national issues, enjoying good fellowship and fun times in between the sessions playing 'Pit!'
• Enjoying a week with my lovely Catty at my house, going for walks, visiting my gran and studying the books of Colossians together as she gets prepared for Relay this year.
• 28 hours of coach journeys to get to Scotland and back (intense joy...) to spend a week working at Abernethy (the christian outdoor centre that I did my gap year at) cooking and cleaning while enjoying the wonderful atmosphere of working with a large group of people who love Jesus.

So, since being back in England I've now packed up, moved to Reading and am setting up house in west Reading in Tilehurst. I've taught my first 2 days at my new school which was a very daunting experience and I think I was more nervous than the 27 kids, but had a great 2 days beginning to get to know them and working out which groups they're going to be in etc.

The big task of teaching my class their first week of academia is now upon me and I have to say that I'm nervous in many ways, but I was wonderfully encouraged in my bible meditation today from Romans 12v9-14, which gives a list of attributes that Paul exhorts us as christians to be a number of things, including:

• Be devoted to one another in brotherly love
• Honor one another above yourselves
• Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer
• Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse

This list of attributes reminds me in some ways of the expectations that are on me as a teacher, there are things which I need to do in order to fulfil my job - teach, mark and assess, and oversee the children's academic, personal and emotional development.

What struck me in reading that list of attributes Paul encourages us to have, was that all of these things are important, as are my teaching responsibilities in my job, but in both cases, they seem overwhelming when I think of what it involves for me! But the wonderful fact of it all is that Paul's previously been reminding the readers of his letter that they are to keep Christ central in their lives - and the product of meditating on Christ's death for us on the cross is that we receive His joy! And from this joy, Paul's readers will want to do these things he mentions - not out of personal reasons but out of that joy He puts in us. These things become a natural reaction to what He's done for us.

Returning our thoughts to our lives then, we must remember to keep the gospel of Christ central, our first thoughts in all things; and then serving God in everything else we want to do will come out of that.

I have to say that I'm amazingly excited but very nervous about this first term. I hope and pray that this will draw me closer to God and help me to realise that I can't do this job (aka. serving him) without his hand on me, guiding me each step of the way). Please keep that in your prayers, and now, let's go for it.

TheWeeScottie

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