Events
Dr. Gary Wassermann's chapel address on the first day of school
The purpose of this address is to exhort you this morning to work hard in the coming year. We'll look at a few verses that will give you some reasons and encouragements to work hard. The main points we'll look at are that you now have opportunity, that you are building habits and patterns for life, and that there is a reward for those who do work hard.
The first verse speaks about working when you have the opportunity. Prov 30:25 says, “Ants are creatures of little strength, yet they store up their food in the summer.” For many of you, summer is the time when you're not in school. For ants, summer is the time when the weather is dry so they can get to food and bring it back. No rain wipes out their path or washes them away. Summer is the time food is available and abundant. The cold winter months have not yet caused the plants to stop growing and sent most of the other animals away. When the winter comes, ants need to eat, and they can do it because they worked when they had the opportunity.
For you, this is your summer. Eventually, you'll grow up and you'll have to support yourself. You'll have bills to pay and many of you will raise children of your own. At that point, it will be too late to learn the skills you need to get a job. If you don't work hard now, you'll have trouble making it by later on. Right now, you don't have much responsibility. Everything is clear for you to go to school. When you study now, you are learning to write, to analyze books, to solve math problems, to understand history, to meet deadlines, to speak another language – all skills that will be very valuable to you later in life if you master them now. I am ready for the responsibilities I now have in part because I worked hard in school. So once again, the first point is that you now have an opportunity that you won't have later on. So work hard and take advantage of it.
The second verse speaks about how you really live. 1 Tim 5:24-25 says, “The sins of some men are obvious, reaching the place of judgment ahead of them; the sins of others trail behind them. In the same way, good deeds are obvious, and even those that are not cannot be hidden.” The point I want to make from this verse is that you are now setting patterns that will stay with you for the rest of your life. The first part of this verse says, “The sins of some men are obvious.” You're out on the playground and you punch someone. You're in trouble, and you know you're in trouble, and everyone else knows you're in trouble. This is an obvious sin. But the next part says, “the sins of others trail behind them.” This is speaking about sins that you don't get in trouble for, at least not right away. Suppose you come home after school and you have some homework that is due the next day. Instead of getting right to it, you waste time perhaps playing computer games. Then you only have a little time to get to your homework, so you stay up late, do a minimal-effort job, and are tired the next day. You may never get in trouble for this, but it is sin. Later in life you'll be lazy, undisciplined, and unable to focus when work needs to be done. But this verse also speaks about good deeds. If you pay close attention to the teacher during class, you will learn the material quickly and more importantly, you will learn the valuable skill of listening. If you work hard to complete your homework and you write it out neatly so that you know you did an excellent job on it, you will find it easy to do an excellent job later on and you will have great success. The excellence of your work will not be able to be hidden.
I have found this true in my own life. Generally, I worked hard, and now I am able to focus and work hard. I didn't have computer games and as I look back I say I didn't miss out on anything because of that. To the extent that I did not work hard, I have bad habits I have to fight.
Let me give another sin that perhaps no one will notice now: disrespecting your teacher. Generally if you don't respect your teacher, you won't do well in class. Often, if you don't respect your teacher, even though you try to keep it a secret, you may talk back to your teacher or do something else that cause your sin, which you've been hiding to be discovered. But if you do respect your teacher, you will be ready to respect your boss later on, and you will succeed. Parents, here is one area where you can have a profound influence on your son or daughter. Speak well of your child's teacher and not critically. Support the teacher when the teacher sends home a bad report so that your child can benefit from it. Your child will learn a lot about how to think about his or her teacher from you.
So once again, the habits you form now will stick with you later in life, and eventually how you have lived, whether disciplined or undisciplined, will become clear.
The third verse speaks about reward. Gal 6:9 says, “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” In the fullest sense this verse is about the whole Christian life. Doing good is serving God. God calls each one of us to be his disciples – that is, to submit to him, to learn from him, and to obey him in everything we do. The book Pilgrim's Progress tells about a man named Christian who set out from the city of destruction, earth, to go to the celestial city, heaven. Most of the book is about his long and dangerous journey symbolizing the Christian life. On his way, he meets with a beast who attacks him, a long dark valley with pits on both sides of the narrow path, and more importantly, with various people who follow the path part way, but then turn back. These people end up in torment and destruction. Christian eventually arrives at the celestial city, and he receives a rich welcome from God. He did not give up. He kept going through his whole life, and he received the great reward of God saying “Well done, good and faithful servant.” This is also a real reward that God holds out to each of you if you become disciples of Christ, that is, if you love and serve him through your whole life.
God calls on his disciples to be disciplined, and his specific assignment for you right now is to work hard in school – not just when you're in class, but also when you get home to study and do homework; not just during the first week, but the whole year, and each year that you're in school after that. There may be others in your class who don't. They may say it's not cool to work hard and do well. They may not care that much about doing well themselves. But you keep going anyway. Rewards come to those who do the job, not to those who have the best excuses or to those who have the most fun along the way. At the 9th grade graduation, there are various awards that are given out. Those are there to encourage you to do well and to recognize those who do. If you do well, your parents will be pleased, your teacher will be pleased, and if you do it in the service of God, He will be pleased. Later on, you will have your choice of which college to attend and which job to take.
It's a wonderful thing for you to succeed, but God has put you in a class. Your classmates have different levels of ability. Also, some of you may be in classes where most of the people in your class have known each other for years, but there are a few new-comers. Help your classmates out. When I was in 7th grade, one of my teachers set up a program where she paired up students who were doing well, as I was, with students who were not doing well in an effort to help the ones who weren't. Frankly, I was rather scared of the guy I got paired up with. He had never had much interest in school or in talking with me, and I didn't see any reason why now would be any different. So I prayed for him on my own that God would help him in school, and I made a sincere effort to help him when I could, and by God's grace, he improved more than any other student in the class. Help each other. Pray for each other. It is a blessing to see someone else succeed.
Finally I want to add two additional points about working hard in school. The first is this: God has given you the abilities that you have. 1 Cor 4:7 says “What do you have that you did not receive?” The answer is “nothing.” If you able to well in math or writing or music or anything else, thank God that he enabled you to do well. Tell others that it is because of his grace if you get commended. You didn't choose the kind of brain or voice or body that you would be born with. Even your discipline is God's grace to you. So if you succeed, don't become arrogant. When I was young, I did become proud. I began to think that I was better than the other people in my class, and at one point in particular I got in trouble because of it. Eventually, I came to see that whatever I have, whether abilities or opportunities or skills or struggles, God has given me.
The second final point I want to make is that if you love and fear God, God will be with you to help you as you go through school. God says to his people many times: do not fear, for I will be with you. Some of you may be nervous about the coming year. When I moved from elementary school into junior high school, I moved from one school to another and from having a single teacher, to having several classes and several teachers. I was pretty nervous about whether I would get lost in this big, new place and whether I would be able to handle the classes I would take. But God was with me, and everything was okay. And if you trust in God, he will be with you too.
So then, work hard. You now have the opportunity to prepare for your future. The way you learn to live now, whether disciplined or undisciplined, is the way you'll live later on. And there is great reward for working hard. May God bless you in the coming year.
Upcoming Events
Date |
Event |
What Will Happen |
Other Details |
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Sep 4 |
Back to School Night |
Minimum Day |
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Sep 26 |
Picture Day |
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Oct 24 |
Teacher In-service |
Minimum Day |
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Oct 29 |
1st Quarter Ends |
Middle School |
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Nov 6 |
Picture Retake |
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