Finishing, Resting, and Starting Well

​ Dear students,
Here we are at the end of our first semester, working online, and working to complete the semester well.  Some of you are finished, and some of you have a bit of work yet to do.  Just a couple more days, and then you’ll have a well-deserved break.  Congratulations on getting to this point!  As we prepare for the next semester, we sent you your new timetable and courses.  That timetable may have brought up a variety of responses – excitement for new things!, apprehension as you look at a heavy course load, or perhaps a desire to get back to school so that you can enjoy these courses in person.  In that timetable letter, I expressed to you my deep hope for you in the second semester, and I would like to share it with you again. 
My deep hope for you in this semester is that you will know yourself more as our heavenly Father knows you.  He has a perfect plan for you this semester and in all of your courses.  Will the semester start online?  It’s not what we might have picked, but it is according to God’s perfect plan for you.  Do you have a heavy course load?  Our heavenly Father knows that too, and He’ll be with you each step of the way.  Not only does He know, but He plans to mold and shape you through this semester.  Our God will be hard at work through the Spirit in you through the semester. 
A teacher once said, “When a student completes her education, she will be judged for the rest of her life not by her test scores, but by the quality of her character and the quality of her work.”  Will you remember that?  Your quality of your character and of your work is more important than your marks.  God delights in you when you reflect His perfect character and His excellent work in your character and in your work. 
I hope that you experienced a growing sense of Crew in the first semester.  I hope that as we enter the second semester that each one of us will experience more and more what it means to be enfolded in our school community and culture of Crew, both in our small crews and in the school community as a whole.  You are part of a “we” and an “us”.  And so, “Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works” (Hebrews 10:24). 
Over the next two weeks, may you finish well, rest well, and start well.
Blessings, MVD

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