Moving books from one shelf to the other; hanging maps, and cleaning some other shelves; checking our list of books, making lesson plans and buying binders, notebooks and pencils all must be ready for a new school year.

So our hearts must be ready.

I was thinking about this while cleaning our schoolroom; what about my heart is it ready for a new school year? Am I preparing myself to be the Christian example my children need?

The only way to keep on doing this great task of homeschooling, is to stop and see what an impossible task it is; and it is only through God’s grace that we will be able to do it. The moment we start trusting on ourselves, the moment we hear ourselves saying that we can easily manage our children’s souls, that is the moment to fall on our knees and ask for repentance, because we are not trusting anymore on our Father but on our own selves.

Let us go in prayer and ask the Holy Spirit to search in our hearts, and prepare us to …

Serve our children by love,
To be always ready to edify their souls.

To be able to choose beauty and lead them to it.
To live pursuing those things that are lovely and of good report.

Let us ask in prayer,
that the Lord will help us live the religion we profess amiable and inviting;
always with zeal but full with love.

Let the Lord prepare our hearts so that we won’t forget
that we must reach our children’s hearts.

That we may not lose our temper, that we may hold our tongue
that we may fight our sinful nature and live serving them.
that we may live in a way that might say at all times:
“Come with me, journey with me, follow me,
I am On My Way to Heaven”

Only the Lord, can help us to be prepared to all the changes and trials
and uncertainties of life, giving us a content heart, a praying heart.

Let us pray as the Puritans,
“May I be in character and conduct 
like the dew of heaven,  the salt of the earth,
the light of the world, the fullness of the fountain”

Let us pray so that our hearts be well prepared to
see all things in the light of the Scripture,
always working hard, never wasting our lives,
redeeming the time.

Let us prepare our schoolroom, but most of all let us prepare our hearts.

Let us clean our schoolroom, but most of all let us clean our hearts with the Word of God.

Let us not forget that all we do is because of Him, through Him, and for Him. To God be all glory.

Lord, help me fulfill the great end of my being-
to glorify thee and be a blessing to my children.