Thursday, February 25, 2021

How Big is Creation: Perspective in our Christian School

There was some excitement among staff and students last week with the latest expedition to Mars. It is fascinating to see images from 500 million kms away being streamed back to earth. It seems amazing that we can communicate that far, and it works! (Even though areas of Ontario still don’t have great cell reception and rural internet isn’t great, but we’ll leave that alone today). A distance that large is something that we can’t really make sense of since it is so far beyond our daily, earthly experience of space and time. I figured out this morning that it is roughly 12,000 times around the equator. Somewhat helpful, but still hard to comprehend. 

As much as we can accurately know, that six month trek of the expedition is 0.0000000005% of the way across the Milk Way. Our little home here on planet earth is pretty small, but our God is very great. 

What joy there is to be able to teach our children that as large as all this is, there is a creator who made it, sustains it, and knows every miniscule detail of it. We get to teach students at LCES that that the same creator who made Mars knows them by name as they rise each day and explore his world. What an opportunity! 

SJ 

P.S. Check out Louie Giglio preaching about Stars and Whales Singing God’s praise here.

Saturday, February 20, 2021

Of Greenhouses and Students at our Christian School

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

The question implied that what we do at LCES isn’t linked in a direct way to what happens outside of the school day for our students. 

The goal of Christian education is not to isolate students from life, but to enable them to fully understand what they are actually seeing. We seek to have students be able to peel back the confusion and distortion of God’s good creation that is caused by sin 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 fosters the ability to discern truth, seek reconciliation, and share love. 

I like to think of the students in our school as seedlings in a greenhouse. We shelter them, but never with the belief that is where they will permanently stay. We do it to give them the best means to grow and flourish where God plants them. Just like the wise gardener starts the seedlings in cold January under glass to give plants the very best chance of being healthy outside in June, we nurture our children in the wonderful space of a Christian school where we grow in wisdom and love each day. 

Bring on the warmth (eventually) of spring!

SJ

Tuesday, February 9, 2021

Learning at Our Christian School: What's your cornerstone?

 “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” Psalm 111: 10

Some of you may know that this text is built right into our building in the form of a keystone installed as part of a wall. It is located immediately outside the kindergarten classrooms. At one point that text was actually outside our building; now it is inside our beautiful facility that the Lord has blessed us with to live out our vision statement which states  “To educate children, equipping them for a life of faithful, Christian discipleship.”

I echo the strong emphasis that the founders of our school placed by choosing this anchor text for our anchor stone in 1962. We can’t truly know anything rightly unless we begin with God. For instance, consider two viewpoints from which to view life:

Lense A

Lense B

What do I get?

Motivated by personal gain

Live for yourself

Truth is relative, you decide

You are what people say about you

Fulfill your dreams

Motivated to do one’s best by fear of failure or rejection

Things happen by random chance

How can I help?

Motivated by advancing the kingdom of God

Lose your life, they you will find it

Truth is absolute, we pursue it together

Identity comes from what God says about you

Fulfill your calling

Motivated to do one’s best in gratitude to God as a faithful response

The world is ordered and upheld by a living God

May God bless our very important work of nurturing biblical wisdom in His children everyday at LCES!

SJ