My favorite memories as a child were back to school shopping for new school supplies, new school clothes, and of course the change of the seasons. We are back to a new year at the preschool with 65 students attending. We have 31 families that are new to St. John’s Preschool this year, many of which have recently relocated to North Carolina.
As for the seasons, we still have summer weather here in my now adopted state, but you can sense the changes coming. The street lights come on sooner, the nights are cooler, and we think of sweater weather that is coming soon. Ecclesiastes 3:1 tells us “there is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.” We at the preschool take such delight in every new season as we experience it through the eyes of the children in our charge. The excitement of a child that recognizes their name for the first time, the delight of a toddler who starts talking more each day, and my favorite thing is when I hear a child tell their parents how much fun they had at school that day!
These are children who have had the experience, as we all have, of living through a pandemic and the way it has affected preschool children is mostly through their social/emotional skills. Many children have had very little interaction with children their age to navigate the art of sharing and we are helping them to learn how to interact with kind words and caring hearts. As we see these precious little ones growing and learning these important life lessons it is sure to remind us all to treat everyone we come in contact with, with love and compassion.
In John 13:34 Christ tells us,”A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another”. We can learn from our little preschoolers who always notice when a friend is missing that day or when someone needs a helping hand. We can all be reminded to look for ways to be more loving towards each other, to be more unified, to focus on what unites us and not on what divides us, and overall to live as Christ commanded us, to love one another.
