by Dennie Booth, SCOPE Chairman

Summertime gives opportunities to reflect, to catch up, to breathe. As you reflect this summer, think over the challenges from the past school year and see how God worked them out. Thank God for His many blessings. Thank Him for carrying you through the difficult times. Thank Him for using the challenges to drive you into His waiting arms.

God works through each challenge to bring about His purposes in your homeschool. Keep this in mind as you look back over the school year. Don’t let the challenges of the past dampen your excitement about the coming year, let them drive you to seek God and to understand His ways.

Each school year will bring blessings and challenges. Viewed rightly, even the challenges are actually blessings. Remember when Joseph told the brothers who sold Him into slavery, “But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.” (See Genesis 50:20.)

The challenges you faced last school year, and the ones coming your way this year, might be the thing God uses to save your children. Those challenges might drive you into His Word for comfort and onto your knees in prayer. This is exactly where you need to be. The challenges will be different this coming school year, no two school years look identical. Whatever shape the challenges take, don’t forget that God will be at work in and through them for your good and His glory.