Christian Education Week 2015

It's Christian Education Week at Covenant!! We are excited to invite you into our school and classrooms to see 'Christian Education' in action! Our pastors will be coming in on Wednesday morning to connect with our students, and Wednesday afternoon from 2:30-3:20, we are inviting parents and supporters to come through an 'Open House'.

Our Theme this year is 'Taking Hold of God's Story', and as a school we are being intentional about identifying and telling stories of God's faithfulness.  These stories take two forms:  looking back and looking forward.

Psalm 139 reminds us that God's story for us began even before we were born.  Ephesians 10:2 reminds us that our story involves works that God has prepared for us to do.  Grace and action.  Providence and response.  As beloved and redeemed of Christ, we are charged to 'Take Hold' of God's story and to own it!

Will you help us 'Take Hold' of God's story by sharing yours?

Around CCS, you will see around the school evidences of God's story.  We would love for you to add your 'stepping stones' on your journey through and experience of Christian Education.  

What does Christian Education mean for you and/or for your family?

If you come in on Wednesday, you will have an opportunity to write it down and add it to our supporters of Christian Education wall not unlike Joshua was commanded to do:

"When your children ask their fathers in times to come, 'What do these stones mean?'  then you shall let your children know,...so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty, that you may fear the Lord your God forever." - Joshua 4: 21, 22a, 24

If you are not able to come in, we would love for you to share your story anyway! By clicking on the link below, you will be able to share your story with us and encourage our staff and students with that witness! http://goo.gl/TUcw3i (If you plan to be here for the open house and want to do this as well, please do!!)

Mercy is Falling

The buds are coming, the grass is greening, the earth is waking up.  

I remember clearly from years ago the early (cold) spring rain pouring down on me as I stood laden down with spruce trees planting my way through a swamp in Northern Ontario.  On that day, about to feel grumpy and sorry for myself, my planting partner bellowed out in song across the clear cut:  "Mercy is falling, is falling, is falling. Mercy is falling like a sweet, spring rain,...."  Since that day, it is hard for me not to smile at the rain, to enjoy feeling it fall down and permeate everything, just as God's mercy does on us, his world, on everything.

As parents and educators, we are reminded that God provides for us goodness and mercy: for us, for our children, and growth and flourishing occurs! God does not wish it, he commands it:  Isaiah 45:8: Open up, heavens, and rain. Clouds, pour out buckets of my goodness!  Loosen up, earth, and bloom salvation; sprout right living.  I, God, generate all this."

Greet the rain this spring as it welcomes new growth, but just as importantly, greet the ever present mercy offered us in Christ.  Pray that together as a school community we welcome and receive his grace as we awaken to growth and becoming what God has intended us to be!!  It's God's story, for us to take hold of!!

Growing together in Christ

Maybe it's the spring weather.  Maybe it's the time spent playing outside.

Maybe it's seeing projects come together and seeing students proud.

Whatever it is, I'm feeling a distinct sense of growth around here at Covenant. 

School is such a wonderful place to be because you get to witness growth all of the time.  Sure, there are set-backs, there is hardship, there is struggle, there is conflict.  All of these things are part and parcel of a growing and learning experience.  When we can step back for a few moments and ask "What has happened over the past months to bring us to this point", we are so often amazed at the work that God is doing here in the lives of our students.

When we can support one another in that journey of academic, spiritual, emotional, and social growth, we all grow.  I think Paul was speaking to this very community effort in his letter to the Ephesians (4:15-16):

"Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work."

I love how Paul acknowledges that the whole body grows and builds itself up.  We aren't just watching students grow and learn, but are growing and learning as parents, teachers, and support community as well.

I want to invite you to come in and see some of this in action.  Our open house during Christian Education week is scheduled for 2:15-3:15 on Wednesday, April 29.  Come, be a 'fly on the wall' in our classrooms.  Watch as we grow and build one another up in love, taking hold of God's story.

When you practice something enough, it becomes a part of you.

In his book 'Outliers', Malcolm Gladwell puts forward that to truly master something, it takes 10,000 hours of practice.  People who spend that much time practicing not only love it, but end up 'doing' their task effortlessly; without even thinking about it.  As I walked through the front doors of Covenant this morning, I was greeted again with the theme for the year "Taking Hold of God's Story". Coming off of Easter celebrations, listening once again to the story which is the climax of our faith, I was struck at how that story is so infused in all we do.  The Easter story is the core of our faith, the core of our school, the core of our lives. Christ died for us so that we do not have to bear the consequences of sin, but can live in right relationship with God once again.  

Living as 'Easter People', how many hours have we practiced?  Do our lives bear the hallmarks of practice, or is our time spent on other things that detract from that story?  If we practice harsh language, pride, deceitfulness, ill-will, ungrace, they will become a part of us.  If we practice, practice, practice taking hold of God's story, it will become a part of us.

We are Easter People.  Pray that the Easter story may be practiced at Covenant every minute of every hour of every day.  By the time our students graduate, they will have practiced 10,000 hours, and they will have 'Taken Hold of God's Story', and can rejoice as Paul does in his letter to the Galatians (2: 20):

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.