This past Friday, we welcomed our new students to campus for the beginning of the 2009-2010 academic year. Rainless cloud cover provided a comfortable environment for unloading packed vehicles and toting boxes, and, as usual, Covenant “veterans” made moving in a delightful and relatively easy process for the newest members of the Covenant community. See pictures of this year’s Move-In Day here, and watch an audio slideshow about Move-In Day here.

The previous evening, our entire Student Development team was joined by other campus folks for the annual prayer walk through all the hallways of all our residence halls. As we filed silently past every doorway, adorned with the names of those who would soon occupy each room, we breathed prayers for God’s blessing on the new and returning students. We ended up in the large, beautiful lobby of Carter Hall for a time of corporate prayer and mutual encouragement as we look forward to the Lord’s gracious and sovereign work among us all.

Just last night, faculty and staff hosted groups of new students for dinner in their homes. Kathleen and I enjoyed hosting a group of transfer students, arriving at Covenant from such locales as upstate New York, Texas, Maryland, Michigan, North Carolina, and right here in Chattanooga. What a delight to hear their stories of how God has led them here!

New students are already heavily engaged in the many activities of Orientation Week, certainly including times of relationship-building and introduction to the campus and the Chattanooga area, but also zeroing in on their academic calling. Beginning last Friday evening and continuing on throughout the first half of the fall semester, the foundational course The Christian Mind introduces students to Covenant’s understanding of the purpose of a college education and the impact that we expect our faith in Christ to have on our work together.

Continuing students arrive this week, and our official year-opening Academic Convocation will be held Thursday morning, with Dr. Steve Kaufmann of Covenant’s education department giving the address.

This season of the year provides an important opportunity for deep reflection on our common task at Covenant, as together we seek to explore and express the preeminence of Jesus Christ in all things. Greeting students and parents always reminds us of the task entrusted to us as part of God’s covenantal blessing across the generations: joyfully rigorous higher education grounded in the authority and sufficiency of the inerrant Scriptures and in the framework of Reformed theological convictions, and energized by the gospel of Jesus Christ, the biblical vision of His eternal Kingdom, and the delight of serving His Church.

This year in particular brings reminders of the challenges facing all of us economically, culturally, and globally. What a blessing to see the commitment of families to pursue a Covenant education, bearing the cost for the sake of the marvelous benefits. It is a delight for us to be able to gather donors and provide financial aid to support this commitment.

We also contemplate the prospect of God’s work in and among and through all of us this year. While we certainly acknowledge that God may choose to show his powerful providence in dramatic, extraordinary ways, we eagerly embrace his ordinary providence – which is how he works his sovereign and gracious purposes most of the time. Through long hours of hard study, writing papers and taking exams, daily mealtimes, conversations among friends, sitting regularly under the preaching of the Word in local congregations and in chapel, exhausting athletic team workouts, diligent piano or violin practice, the discipline of part-time jobs – through all these ordinary means, God will surely delight in accomplishing exactly what he intends for our students and faculty and staff at Covenant.

We acknowledge as well that God’s plans for us this year may include difficulties and painful experiences and suffering that we would rather not face. But at this start of the year, we remind one another yet again of this:

…we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. (Romans 8:28-30)

This is the foundation of our confidence at the beginning of another year, that God is conforming us to the image of his Son, in all the eventualities of every day, and that he will faithfully and mightily continue to do so until he has finished what he has begun and we stand glorified in his presence.