Just some early morning thoughts from me to you…

The Lord has made everything for His own purposes.” Proverbs 16: 4 (NLT)

If the story is true as it has been passed down throughout history, the twentieth President of the United States of America would have been a very busy man around the start of school—as we are about to experience in our country once again.

Upcoming weeks during which my granddaughters, and children of all ages all across this nation return to classrooms to begin yet another year of formal education—private, public and home-school. Elementary, secondary, college, and graduate schools—hopefully tapping into all their potential as they are equipped with the academic tools, accurate historical lessons, and spiritual groundings they will need to live the lives of success and significance they were created to live by the God who loves them.

As the story goes, President James Garfield had what many viewed as a most unusual habit. For whenever he was approached by a little child while out walking, he would take a moment to bow his head to the child in a show of great respect and dignity. And in that gesture, the President, who served for only eight months in that office before falling to an assassin’s bullet, was treating that child similar to a head of state or a foreign dignitary.

When asked why he felt it necessary to demonstrate that obvious display of respect for each child he met, he responded very matter-of-factly and pointedly—

Because no one knows who’s buttoned inside that little jacket or dress.”

And it’s true. No one knows the potential wrapped inside the body of a little child. No one knows whether that child will someday be a leader of mankind, a pillar of our community, state, nation or world, or something else.

By the same logic, no one knows the potential wrapped inside each one of us—of every age—waking up this morning to a brand new day. A “great day”, as my bride, Lynda, described it with a smile and lilt to her voice, in her greeting to me the other morning. She gave no particular reason when I asked her why she said that, other than that she had a feeling that it was simply another day full of opportunity and possibility. That’s just one of many reasons God blessed me with gift of her life many years ago.

She’s absolutely right you know. It’s a great day for each of us to venture into those vast untapped areas of our lives. Areas that perhaps we have never even considered as being within our reach, yet which lie within us. Pools of potential and possibility lying just beneath the surface of our awareness waiting to be discovered.

Yet too often they become clouded over by the problems of our day, anxieties about our future, personal or family concerns, and troubles at the office and on the job, financial stress, or just a sense that we can’t do it.

Don’t let that be your story.

I don’t know what’s going on in your life now. I don’t know what the rest of your life looks like. I don’t know what the rest of the lives will look like of each of our children who are beginning a new year of school at every level.

But I do know that each of those lives was created for a purpose by a perfect God who makes no mistakes.

And were he here today, I am certain President Garfield would continue to bow to each child he passed, and I suspect to each of you.

In his absence, allow me to do so, recognizing and acknowledging with my respectful bow to you from afar, all the potential and possibility which God has placed within each of you, for a glorious day such as this, and for all your tomorrows.

It’ a great day. And you’re a great creation of God. So why not live like it, believing in all the potential and possibility which the God of the universe placed within you.

Doing that would be our bow of thanks back to Him for all He created you and me to be.

In His Name—Scott

Copyright 2017. Scott L. Whitaker. All rights reserved.