When you read this, GCSE and ‘A’ level students exams will be well underway. Hoping against hope that they’ll make the grade and earn their ticket to the next stage. Because that’s in essence what these summative assessments are. A ticket to the next thing.
Our children seem to be put under more and more pressure today, which seems ironic in an age where the expectation of settling into a job which would last until retirement seems like a relic of a bygone age. (My husband worked for the same company for 43 years!). Today we assume at least one mid-career shift. My fellow trainee vicars came from all walks of life. How we start out is rarely where we end up.
The only person who knows the end from the beginning is God. He alone knows the path we’ll take, with all its twists and turns along the way. And whatever twists and turns there are, none of them are wasted with him. Some sort of change is inevitable. When we pray to God to act in our situation, he does not always answer in the way we expect him to. We need to trust God and know that all he has planned is for the greater good and the development of his Kingdom here in Ashford.
When Jesus picked his disciples, he did so, knowing who and what they were, and it all informed what fulfilling their calling to proclaim the Good News looked like. The way they communicated, where they went, the roles they fulfilled in the early church. No one was rejected because they hadn’t passed GCSE Maths.
So, pray for our children and young people, that the pressure wouldn’t get to them, and they would be free to spend as much time as they need to work out what they want to do next. Changing their minds as much as they need to. Pray that they would absorb the boosts and knockbacks, knowing that these don’t define who they are as people or what they are worth.
Pray that they would know above all else that they are loved. Just. As. They. Are.
The Revd Charlotte Coles