Back in the Day - Guest Blog by Dave Earle

It was 1960 and I had just walked into my new 3rd-grade classroom at Ridge Street Elementary Public School in Newark N.J. .. Our family had recently moved to N.J. from Concord, New Hampshire. I didn't know anyone and really wasn't interested in being singled out as "the new kid".

Just my luck, on that very first day Mrs. Leskiew, asked me to read a Psalm from the Bible. I figured she must have found out that my dad was a pastor. Pastors' kids are good at reading the Bible... Right? Actually, it appeared, by the looks on the other students' faces, that reading the Bible in school and reciting The Lord's Prayer was a pretty mundane practice here. And though very shy, I reluctantly agreed - until I realized that she meant I would be doing this in front of the entire school. So, of course, it didn't happen.

Not that day anyway.

I was beginning to wonder what kind of school this was. After all, we never read the Bible in either public school that I attended in Concord.

Some weeks later I was again asked to read a Psalm in front of the entire school. Still very nervous, but, since I had seen the routine several times by now, I figured I could survive the ordeal. Hands trembling and finding it a little hard to breathe, I walked across the wooden stage - making the only sound in that large, packed auditorium,

I turned to the page where my thumb had been squeezed to numbness for the last 5 minutes. My Psalm was not selected from the passages that most of the other nominees would typically choose - Psalm 100 or, the ever-popular 23rd Psalm. Instead, I read from a Psalm that I had chosen because it was something different; Psalm 39, where it says, "I said I will take heed to my ways, that I sin not with my tongue.....Lord make me to know mine end, and the measure of my days, what it is; that I may know how frail I am...".

I then led the entire student body in the reciting of The Lord's Prayer as was the daily custom. I was somewhat surprised by the reaction of the teachers... mostly very quiet. Maybe they were just surprised by the use of a "non-standard" Psalm. Or maybe they were really old and could understand the significance of the "measure of my days" part...

That was a very long time ago. It seems that all of a sudden I am looking back, from 60 years of age, and hearing again while the boy reads, "The measure of my days..." - Where does time go? This post is not intended to stir up the debate of the "separation of church and state.." etc., I just thought that some of my students would find it interesting.

Just a couple of years after my debut - sharing Psalm 39 in school - we were told that we would no longer be reading Psalms or saying (or singing) the Lord's Prayer each day. It was the law now, but that meant very little to me. I knew that there would be no more stressing over having to sweat through any more Bible presentations in front of the whole school. And I probably thought that was a good thing.

But I know now that I really did miss those few minutes each day when our minds were calmed and we focused on Someone and something bigger and better than ourselves. It was a time that together we asked that God's "will be done on earth as it is in heaven".

Something very valuable was lost and I'm only beginning to appreciate that now.