Wednesday, March 18, 2020

Lent - Day 19 - Goodness



Dear Christian educators,



What a psalm! Do you think it is the most famous one? It may be the most memorized one. If you haven't committed it your heart yet, I highly recommend it. This last segment of this Psalm may be the most well-known and our focus because of goodness. Let's look at all of Psalm 23.





The Lord is my shepherd, 
I shall not want. 
He makes me to lie down in green pastures,

He leads me besides the still waters,
He restores my soul.

He leads me in the paths of righteousness
For His name’s sake.

Yea, though I walk
 through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,

For You are with me;

Your rod and Your staff,
 they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me 
in the presence of my enemies.

You anoint my head with oil;
    
My cup runs over.
Surely your goodness and mercy will follow me

All the days of my life;
And I will dwell in the house of the Lord

Forever.

Each day during this season of Lent, I will post one verse and pray it with you. Consider saying the verse in your quiet time and praying it also. You may use the same prayer or try your own. Each day until Easter (except Sundays) there will be a new post that contains: a verse, a small reflection, a prayer using the Scripture and an image. Feel free to share the images because I made them with the Bible Lens app and took all the pictures. What a creative God we serve!


Day 19


Psalm 23:6 English Standard Version (ESV)

 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
    all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
    forever. 



I wrote a blog post about Goodness in the Classroom seven years ago that I'd like to share an excerpt from:

As I looked upon the word goodness in the Bible, I was surprised to find only 19 times that the word was mentioned. Naturally, the majority of the time the reference was to God’s goodness. Do you ever stop to think about His goodness? It’s overwhelming. Everything that is good comes from our Lord. The ability to be a teacher is because of His goodness. The desire to become better teachers comes from His goodness.  How can we display goodness to our students? This is not as simple as it appears on the surface. We are not naturally good as He is, but we are his ambassadors in our walk and to represent Him well in our classrooms daily, we must strive to be good to our students. As public school educators (teachers, paraprofessionals or administrators), we have the power to influence our students daily. Making a concerted effort to be good to them can change the whole focus of our classroom.





Dear Lord,

Thank you for Psalm 23. Even though we are looking at such a small part of David's great poem, we are struck at how You give us confidence in our future. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life! That's a powerhouse of a gift, Lord. Thank You for eternal life through the indescribable gift from Jesus Christ. How do we take it in? Help us Lord to extend goodness and mercy to our students and colleagues all the days of our lives in school. We love you and thank You for being a God of goodness. Amen.

Prayerfully yours,

Karen C. Seddon
CEAI - Christian Educators Assoc. Int.
State Director for Florida
407.892.5651
....an unqualified recipient of His unconditional love


2 Timothy 3:16 -17- All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

No comments:

Post a Comment