Peculiar Peacemakers At Our Christian School

(picture pre-COVID)

“Blessed are the peacemakers… for they will be called children of God.” Matthew 5:9 

I’ve heard someone summarize Christian Education as an unending effort to raise peculiar people. Not peculiar in the sense of being odd, standing out for reasons that are ego-building, or people who “find their own groove” in ways that fill up social media accounts. Instead, peculiar describing people so motivated by their love of God and desire for the Kingdom that they are compelled to serve and love without ceasing. It is their unending commitment to love in determined ways that gives way to the descriptor of “peculiar.” 

Peculiar people build the God’s Kingdom every day: 

When peace and reconciliation overcome conflict, the Kingdom is built. 

When grief and sadness are chased away by faith-nourished hope, the Kingdom is built. 

When loneliness and desperation are washed away by communal joy, the Kingdom is built. 

When apathy and disillusionment are replaced with passionate purpose, the Kingdom is built. 

When division and hatred are replaced by justice and righteousness, the Kingdom is built. 

The world cries out for those who are peculiar. 

SJ

Finding The Most Important Work At Our Christian School

 "Children are not a distraction from more important work. They are the most important work."

-CS Lewis-

While the intense tornado of COVID may feel like it is starting to move off, there is no doubt that we are still dealing with the thunderstorms that are lingering far longer than we wish. Many of my conversations in the last month have started with a wondering question about how COVID will have impacted childhood and learning for all students.

There are two ways to answer that question:

There is a diagnostic response, which is important and can focus our efforts and revisions to education in the next years as we resume something closer to our former academic life as a school. I am very convinced that our teachers can adapt this fall, and in the years to come. In part, this is why students in grades five through eight will be taking the Measure of Academic Progress test in the next nine days. We are keen to measure what they have learned and what they are ready to learn next so that we serve them well. We believe that students within this age group can take these tests successfully and the results will be credible.

But there is also a relational response, which starts with the bold declaration that our children belong to God before they belong to anyone else, and that the Lord will sustain them (Psalm 55:22). God asks us to be part of those efforts. A “COVID booster” response of emphasizing to our children that they are known by name by God, and that we know and love them seems more appropriate than ever. They will have a lifetime among other faithful people to figure out grade specific details that may have been delayed due to COVID, but knowing they are loved can’t wait. One of the ways our children come to know that they are loved by God is that they are loved within their family. When we build a shed, read a book, try out a new recipe, or repair a bike – deliberately with them, that is part of God sustaining them.

And in the end we come to realize its good for us as parents too.

SJ

A Post-Easter Walk and Our Christian School

 “What are you discussing as you walk along?” (Luke 24:17)

Jesus joined the two walking along in their despair. They were lost, not on the road way – but entirely lost in thought. The kind of conversation where one isn’t really aware of one’s surroundings. I can picture repeated questions between the two, with no clear answers as they were reviewing harsh words, piercing accusations, and swift actions in Jerusalem. It had all happened so fast that while they knew the sequence of events, they could not make sense of it. So, the resurrected Jesus walked along with them, started over again with Moses and walked through God’s story so that they could understand. It was only after they broke bread together that they realized who was giving them such council – Jesus, the living Lord! 

There is much in this story for us as a community of learning that is also a community of faith. The kind of understanding the two travelers were looking for was found in connection and relationship. Jesus walked with them, and went about a daily pattern of life with them – eating a meal. Meaning came from prolonged period of relational connection. 

LCES staff spend up to 10,000 hours with our students from JK-8, living in a connected way with them. Formal instruction, personal conversations, shared trips and shared meals offer the stage for wise council. Spirit-led moments of discovery are formative as our students make sense of a world that is often harsh, inconsistent, and confusing – but ultimately is loved and redeemed by Christ. May our children also recognize Jesus along their road of life. 

SJ

Teaching and the Timing of Easter at Our Christian School

I heard an intriguing question this weekend: What does it tell us that Jesus lived among his people and taught about the kingdom for more than three years before he bore our sins in the Easter events that we are about to travel through in remembrance next month?

It’s hard to conceive of a timeline of Jesus making his entrance, unannounced, to earth only a few days before Easter, saving us by grace on the cross and then, like a hurried traveler connecting to the next flight, leave abruptly and not be seen again.

There were three years of deliberate conversations, long walks, and seaside lessons of pacing with the Son of God.  The people had lost their way and their hearts had been hardened. Their downtrodden, hopeless, and in some cases legalistic souls were places that needed to hear about the kingdom of God. This kingdom was so upside down from what they expected that they learned that even children who approached could sit on the lap of Son of God and be blessed by him. The first shall be last and the last shall be first. Jesus had to teach us, as one of us.

One of the things I appreciate about a Christian elementary school pathway for a child is that the years of JK through grade eight have so many places of opportunity for this kind of pacing. What joy that there can be lingering conversations about the love of God, deliberate focus on recognizing God at work among his people, and longing for the perfection of that kingdom when it will be fully restored. When a teacher sits on the carpet with the students or pulls up a chair around the circle of students, they are teaching as one of them. It is a beautiful sight.

May God’s kingdom come this week at our Christian School.

SJ

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.

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

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