The Black and White of Easter At Our Christian School

Grade 4/5 Easter Art

As a small child my father used to share Bible stories from a children’s Bible. I can still picture that Bible which held a prominent position at mealtimes and bed-time rituals for many years. Since I was too young to be able to understand the stories as they were written, by father allowed me to pick the story that I would like to hear based on the dramatic black and white sketches that were found throughout the two-volume set. With words and details suitable for my very young understanding, I heard my own version of the mighty acts of God that matched the drawings I paged through on my own before I could read.

I recall asking several times for the story that matched a full two-page spread of a dramatic scene of the anguish of the dark day at Golgotha that we mark during this Holy Week. In gentle ways, my father told me that story was so big and so immense that I was not old enough to understand it completely; what I needed to know was that God loved me immensely and that I would learn as I got older just how much more he loved me specifically.

How do you bring the harsh reality of Good Friday and the abundant joy of Easter Sunday to a young learner? We do so by making the journey back year after year to sustain and grow our faith. We tell the stories and sing of the love of Christ-crucified. We speak of why the sacrifice was necessary and what salvation achieved for us. Classroom teachers throughout LCES will be busy with that task this week in ways that are well-suited to the stage of faith formation their students are at. No matter if we are seven or seventy-seven, we circle back to the cross to reconnect anew to the “old, old story of Jesus and His love.”

We pray that the joy of Easter and the gift of true life before our resurrected Savior will be a blessing in your household. Christ is risen, He is risen indeed!                                                                       SJ

Duplo Blocks and Budgets at Our Christian School

 “What are you making?” I asked a young learner with a delightfully coloured scattering of Duplo books in front of him, obviously awakening his desire to create something unique. 

‘“I’m not sure yet” came the quick reply. “I will know when the blocks are finished being put together.”

As we return back from March break, this is perhaps an accurate picture of what the board and leadership of the school are busy with these next weeks. We’re putting the pieces of the 2018-19 school year together without knowing, at least not entirely, what the end result will be. The Duplo blocks of the board are strategic plans, a budget, staffing, board succession plans, new enrolment, re-enrolment, and more.

I would suggest that starting with assertion we don’t know what the end product will look like is a good thing. This is God’s school. These are his children we love and educate. This is his world. He has plans for us that we are called to pray and work toward with fear and trembling, sweating out that which we believe to part of his plan for our school, and what is not. Following God’s plan, and desiring to be found faithful with the gifts God has given us is our goal.

When we look backwards over our shoulder in life, we are quick to speak of God’s faithfulness and provision. We are also wise to do the same when we start a new endeavor, moving forward boldly in full knowledge that God has “more than we can ask for or imagine” in store for us. (Ephesians 3:20)

Please uphold the work of the Board Executive, Full Board, Finance, and Administration in prayer. We wait expectantly for God’s blessings as they have been promised us. Have a great week!  SJ

Our Christian School and the "Real World"

An inquiring parent asked me a question over the phone recently.

“How do your students do when they enter the real world?”

The assumption implied in the way in which that question was asked was that what we do at LCES isn’t linked in a direct way to what happens outside of the school day for our students. I firmly believe it does.

Christian education has as its goal not to isolate students from life, but to enable them to fully understand what they are actually seeing around them: God’s amazing world! We seek to have students be able to peel back the confusion and distortion of that good creation caused by sin in order to see creation as it was originally meant to be, and one day what it will become again. The “real world” without the story of the mighty acts of God isn’t real at all, since it tells an incomplete story of what life is really all about. As C.S. Lewis said through one of his characters, we seek to provide students ample opportunity to “…go further in and go further up” as they deepen and widen their understanding of all things. Mixed in between math facts and poetry, gym class and art, Christian education grounds students growing knowledge with the ability to figure what is real, true, valuable, honorable, and worthwhile.

It is always fascinating to see how students summarize what they have been learning when I talk with them about what they are doing in their classrooms. Walking down the back hallway on the way outside for recess, I heard a student sharing the contents of a lesson with a friend in a different grade.  “I wish the world was the way God made it – like in the Garden of Eden. It sounds like it was pretty good.” I hear a seed planted in God’s kingdom.

SJ  

Why Study History in our Christian school?

Witnessing a history lesson in one of our classrooms, I heard a student remark to a neighbour with disgust about how one group of people treated another long ago. “Did they forget they were actual people too?” was the wondering thought, guided by added clarity of a few centuries of distance from the immediate situation.

The harsh reality was meeting our students that people struggle to move away from being cold and indifferent towards those they don’t immediately know or appreciate, to ignore the injustice done to those we think deserve it, and to only surround ourselves with like-minded people.

But Jesus asks for something different. We need to see our fellow image-bearers as unique, worthy,
and deliberately created human beings. Jesus wants us to show hospitality in the sense of seeing others as he sees them; people who are dearly loved and worth him dying for. Jesus recognizes that this task is too much for our heart of stone, which is why he is giving us a new “heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26)  in the same way the Israelites needed a new identity after being scattered because of their disobedience. We can love, because Jesus’ love frees us to do so.

Love everyone. Though the task looms large, He who promised is faithful! This counter-cultural way of looking at community reminds us of being “transformed by the renewing of your mind” that Paul describes in Romans 12. We pray that our daily work with our students, your children, will have lasting impact and be a significant force in shaping the adults they will be one day. We know they are “works in progress.” How exciting to think of who they are and will become for God’s kingdom!

May God bless our living and learning by faith in the next months of term three. SJ