The local stores are already starting to carry pumpkin spice-flavored items, which can only mean one thing: It’s still the middle of summer! …Or maybe it means that the school year is just around the corner! At Bryn Athyn Church School, we are gearing up for the coming school year, complete with a new principal and some new faculty and staff members. Our school theme for this coming year is “Walk in all the ways that I have commanded you” (Jeremiah 7:23). Part of this theme will focus on the Ten Commandments themselves: “There is an infinity in the Word’s least details….It is especially true of the Ten Commandments. Because they teach love for God and love for our neighbor, they are a brief synopsis of the entire Word.” (TCR 290). “In loving God and our neighbor, the first step is not doing evil, and the second step is doing good.” (TCR 329) When we follow the Ten Commandments we can find true happiness: “If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love….These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full.” (John 15:10-12) Part of our school theme will also focus on the active verb to “walk.” “To walk in the Word symbolically means to live, and to walk with God symbolically means to live from Him.” (AR 167) Physically, there are numerous health benefits to walking. And spiritually, there are numerous spiritual health benefits to walking in the Lord’s commandments. As adults, walking is second nature, and we rarely think about it as we’re doing it. But mechanically, walking involves a process in which we are continuously falling and catching, falling and catching. This is what is involved in walking in the Lord’s commandments as well. The Lord doesn’t expect us to be perfect. So whenever we “fall and catch” ourselves, we are taking important steps in walking in His commandments. Infants learn to walk by holding on to their parent’s hands. We can learn to walk spiritually by holding on to the Lord’s hands. We are supported from above, while we do the work, as if of ourselves, with our feet. It takes practice to walk in the Lord’s commandments, and helping our students practice for both natural and spiritual life is part of our mission at Bryn Athyn Church School. So, I hope you enjoy the rest of your pumpkin spice-flavored August. And then as we begin the school year, “Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord…He will teach us His ways, and we shall walk in His paths” (Isaiah 2:3).
