Good morning, God

We are often asked why we choose to send our children to a Christian school if it costs so much money, and I must admit that sometimes the answers are hard to articulate well. My answers that include phrases like “Christian worldview” and “Christian psychology of education” tend to cause people’s eyes to glaze over. How does one really explain what it is we are getting in return for our investment?

Every morning in the Kindergarten classroom where I am an aide, after the Bible Story, comes prayer time. The students are already quiet, calm, and their hearts are full from hearing the Word. The teacher tells the students that it is time to pray and they all get ready. They close their eyes and fold their hands on their laps as they sit on the rug in the corner of the room. The teacher always says something like, “We are going to talk to God now and if you haven’t said Good Morning to God yet this morning, you can do that right now.” And she begins her prayer with “Good morning, God.” Then she is quiet for a moment and you can hear the murmurs and the whispers of the children on the rug, echoing her voice and saying, “Good morning, God.” Sometimes there’s only a few voices, sometimes I hear all 18 voices. Sometimes I even hear other phrases, like “Thank you for the sunshine” or “Please help {student} to feel better.” The teacher then continues with her morning prayer, which is complete with adoration of God, confession, thankfulness, and supplication – a time of asking God to meet our many needs and for the many prayer requests that are in our classroom, school, and community.

The first time I heard the teacher lead them in prayer this way, it was moving. I thought to myself, “And that, right there, is enough.” Enough reason to invest in Christian education. To have other adults emulating this for my children, especially when I fail (and honestly, sometimes children listen better to others than they do to their own parents!), to have my children be purposefully taught that the most important part of their day is to say Good Morning to God and commune with Him, to have my children witness that God is the center of it all, the beginning of it all…just that is enough for me.