Thank-you for our problems...

The start to our day at LCES this morning was less than ideal. News of someone’s choice to leave their graffiti “tag” on our playground, building, and bus was the first thing to respond to. No heat in parts of the building was the second. Trying to remember how to change all the clocks after the time change was next. And so the list continued, with items that one might respond to with “Really? I’d sooner be doing something else.”

It doesn’t take much to become centered only on ourselves and our own problems. Sometimes our own situation becomes “re-framed” when we place it next to plight of another person, organization, or group.  The content of Monday morning chapel was that helpful interrupter for me this morning.

Staff and students heard that this is a month set aside to recognize the reality of those Christians who are persecuted for their faith throughout the globe.  Significantly restricted opportunities, families broken apart, physical harm, imprisonment, and in some cases death is the result of expressing Christian belief in much of the globe.

Our heat will get fixed and we can take care of the graffiti. Our clocks will show the right time.

For a school that is entirely committed to expressing its Christian faith in devotional practice, academic study, and faithful living we certainly experience an abundance of freedom from many of the roadblocks and harm that others experience.  We are grateful that God gives us the freedom to operate a school such as ours and in so doing we can boldly give expression to our faith as live and learn each day.

But that response to the persecuted church is incomplete. We are called to pray for the persecuted church, remember their plight (Hebrews 13:3), and work for justice everywhere. I read this weekend that  “every local practice of justice plants the seeds for justice to flow wider and higher in the entire world.” 

May our students “grow in grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ “ (2 Peter 3:18) each day at LCES so that they can plant such kingdom seeds throughout their lives.  SJ