Closed is undoubtedly one of the most distressing, even depressing, words in the dictionary. When you’re raring to buy something very important from a store and right on the door is the word closed; or when you need to withdraw some cash for an emergency from the bank and this sign greets you:
$%$#@#!!!
That’s exactly how my stomach churned after reading today’s news: over four million students have not enrolled and 748 private schools have closed.
What’s sad about the word closed is that, at one time it was open. So now it means: boundary, barrier, restricted, and worst, blockade, like a fire wall or an iron curtain that divides.
Those now-closed private schools have educated hundreds of thousands of students over the years. I know many private school owners and teachers who had been passionate about their roles, going beyond the call of duty to prepare kids for the future.
And today, or perhaps the days thereafter, I grieve with them—not so much for the income and jobs they lost (that goes into another chamber of weeping and wailing) but for the students deprived of education that would teach them life skills, their armor in this world that has become a war zone.
Parents, more than ever, upon our shoulders rests the job of educating our children from our homes. I have no how-to manual, but we can begin by reading our Bible and teaching our kids about grace and the ways of the Lord.
Deuteronomy 6:7 tells us, “You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.”
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