Dear Parents and Friends of CCS,
I hope this issue of Parent News finds you experiencing the fullness of Christ!
We 12-month-ers have been hard at work preparing for the fall, and it is shaping up to be another great year!
In my July article, I’ll get into the specifics, but for now I can say that the staff is focusing on campus facility upgrades in the Elementary and Secondary buildings, pre-onboarding new employees, analyzing and researching curriculum, and preparing some new programs for launch.
Mostly, though, we are challenging one another to spend time beholding Jesus so that we can be increasingly formed into His image.
In a recent staff devotional I shared from Exodus 33 about one of Moses’ encounters with God. (Exodus 33:12-22 CSB from Blue Letter Bible.com):
12 Moses said to the LORD, “Look, you have told me, ‘Lead this people up,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. You said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor with me.’
13 “Now if I have indeed found favor with you, please teach me your ways, and I will know you, so that I may find favor with you. Now consider that this nation is your people.”
14 And he replied, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”
15 “If your presence does not go,” Moses responded to him, “don’t make us go up from here.
16 “How will it be known that I and your people have found favor with you unless you go with us? I and your people will be distinguished by this from all the other people on the face of the earth.”
17 The LORD answered Moses, “I will do this very thing you have asked, for you have found favor with me, and I know you by name.”
18 Then Moses said, “Please, let me see your glory.”
19 He said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim the name ‘the LORD’ before you. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.”
20 But he added, “You cannot see my face, for humans cannot see me and live.”
21 The LORD said, “Here is a place near me. You are to stand on the rock,
22 “and when my glory passes by, I will put you in the crevice of the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by.
I believe this passage is a wonderful encouragement for us to stay the course in the hard things we encounter, depending on the presence and power of the LORD (Yahweh, the Self-Existent One, the infinite, all-powerful God) to be with us.
Verse 17 is especially poignant:
God knows Moses’ name (representing who the person really is) and ours as well, and in Christ we have found favor, the kind of favor that ushers us into the throne room of God and allows us access as adopted sons and daughters to His infinite storehouse of all that we need!
He gives us “a place near Him” where we can “stand on the rock” (i.e. Christ).
So I close this month’s article with a challenge:
I challenge you to meditate on this passage for a few minutes before scrolling down the page, to allow it to take root in your soul, in your “inner person”.
This is the sort of spiritual practice that will over time allow you to be shaped and formed into the Christ-image.
As you meditate on Scripture day after day after day, the Holy Spirit reveals His deeper truths, and in a way we can’t describe, He changes us from the inside out. We become more like Jesus.
There are many challenges facing us as educators, parents and students in this era of history, and many of them can cause fear, confusion and dis-orientation, and even anxiety and depression.
Yet God is not confused, fearful nor depressed. He wrote the story! He is writing Your story!
And He has offered to provide everything we need to trust Him, to follow Him and to live our lives for him as our One Thing i.e. that which is by far the most important thing in our lives.
But we have to show up most days, open His word and behold Him (gaze at, peer into, enjoy, worship and adore).
It’s just that simple, and just that hard.
May this summer be a time of reconnection, not just with family, but with the God who made and loves us to the end.
For CCS and the Kingdom,
Tom
NOTE: For those who are asking: I do not use A.I. to write these articles, nor do I plan to in the future. They are “all-human” and wonderfully imperfect!