Commencement Prayer

Tonight, June 5th, 2012,  Lighthouse Christian Academy held a commencement, and commenced--began anew. The 8th grade class of 2012 is the last to graduate under the LCA banner. Tonight, after 25 years as LCA, we begin a new chapter, season, adventure--a cooperative venture with Christian Center School in Hayden. This fall, our schools will combine to form a larger entity with the common goal of excellent, creative Christian education. As with any change, it involves a losing and a gaining, a grief and a joy. It is painful to let go of the good that we know for the good that we can only anticipate. Nonetheless, we undertake this project with hope and vigor, and craving God's blessing and guidance.  We offer our thanks to God, expressed in this benediction:

We thank you, dear Father, sweet Christ, ever-present Spirit, 

for your love and provision for Lighthouse -- throughout this 

school year and the 24 school years that came before.  

God, you have so graciously led us,

placed your guard behind and before us, 

blessed the sweet children who passed through our doors,

provided when we needed, forgave us when we sinned,

corrected us, comforted us, inspired us,

strengthened us, and danced with us.

 

You sing over us even now.

 

We trust you to provide for us as we step into

the future you have prepared for us,

as we submit ourselves to you, 

as we remain thankful for your provision.  

Help us to rejoice. 

Help us to love eachother. 

Help us to glorify you.  

In your precious and powerful name, we pray. Amen!

People Are Awesome.

My son Jake introduced me to something on the internet today that is simply amazing. I may be way behind the times, and you all may have already discovered this trove of treasure, but something tells me you haven't. Jake tends to be the first in our family to dig up these internet riches.

It is called Wolfram Alpha. You can find it at www.wolframalpha.com. It will blow your mind.

The goal of Wolfram Alpha is staggering: "Wolfram Alpha's long-term goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone."  Whaaaaat?  They go on to say, "We aim to collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything. Our goal is to build on the achievements of science and other systematizations of knowledge to provide a single source that can be relied on by everyone for definitive answers to factual queries. "  If that doesn't knock you off your perch, I don't know what will.

At first, you will assume that it is just another internet search engine. However, you would be wrong. The difference between Wolfram Alpha and normal internet search engines is that WA is building its own complex database from which computations can be made, increasing the likelihood that the answer you are seeking will be accurate. Instead of "googling" an answer and hoping the ehow.com answer you get is provided by a trustworthy source, you can go to Wolfram Alpha and get a definitive answer. Sort of like an unbelievably extensive and interactive World Book Encyclopedia, but way, way cooler.

I urge you to take a minute or 30 to explore the website a bit, after you are done reading this blog post. When you arrive at the home page, click on the word "Examples" under the search bar. This will give you categories of knowlege that WA allows you to explore.  Even if you aren't a math/science person, the variety and intricacy of topics to discover is compelling. I guarantee you will not immerge in less than 15 minutes. If you do, it is either because you have a toddler tugging on your sleeve or something burning on the stove--certainly not because you can't find anything interesting to consider.

Whether Wolfram Alpha's lofty goals are attainable is beyond my ability to evaluate. It seems a bit crazy. However, they have already accumulated a significant number of resources. Consider that they have curated 10+ trillion pieces of data from primary sources with continuous updating, and accumulated 50,000+ types of algorithms & equations. And they have made it possible to enter questions in normal-person language, or "free-form natural language input."  Any computer guy will tell you how significant this is.

Now, lest you think this is just one gigantic Wolfram Alpha commercial, let me just draw your attention to the title of this post. The only reason WA is this remarkable is because people are awesome. People are stunningly intelligent, creative, hopeful, energetic, forward-thinking, undaunted, resolute...the list is as endless as the day is long, and we haven't even begun to understand how gloriously we are made. God imagined us, and made us in His image (perhaps the imagining and making was all one step? Maybe God's imaginings are so complete and perfectly well thought out that they can't help but exist? But that's a topic for another day...) and we are the jewel in the crown of creation. We have the God-given ability to imagine a project as daunting as Wolfram Alpha, actually say, "yes, I believe we can do this," and then have the audacity to try!

People are awesome--and I use that word not as the deflated-balloon coloquialism it has become, but with the fullness of the Godhead joyfully infusing it, solidly supporting it, shouting it out, making it new. In daily life as you encounter less-than-stellar examples of human interaction (road rage, line-cutting, foul language, rude service--to name the most benign examples) try to see each person as a miracle of God's creativity, with unlimited worth. Don't ever let the fact that we are creatures who have also fallen short of God's glory blind you to the magnificence of being created in God's image, the mind-boggling, singular, universally bestowed characteristic of human beings. Can you even begin to imagine the joy in heaven and the new earth when we are free from the entanglements of sin and free to be fully, gloriously human? God knows what we can be--thank Him for not forgetting us! Thank Him! Thank Him!

Now, go out and do something amazing!!

Think Spring...

It's lighter longer. It smells springy. Though this winter was not hard as North Idaho winters go, it was, as usual, dark. What a relief to have more daylight. It creeps into my life quietly and almost unnoticed, until suddenly, I DO notice it. And I rejoice. Is it the same for you?

More light points my thoughts outward--toward growing things, toward things being made new.

I went searching for interesting spring sites, and came across one which you may enjoy looking over with your children. How is God making all things new? Enjoy!

http://www.learner.org/jnorth/

Speak With (like) Conviction

I have noticed, especially in the past few weeks, that either my brain is tired or I am lazy.  Perhaps I need to read more challenging books, or study the thesaurus, or stay off facebook. I'm not sure. Of this I am sure: my vocabulary is thinner than it once was. When I describe something or react to my kids' pronouncements, all too often I hear myself resorting to "That's cool!" or "Awesome!" or "Interesting!" and not working very diligently to dig up more descriptive words.  When I recognized how often I was reaching into the same boring barrel, pulling out tired, nondescript phrases, I was shocked. And bored. Bored with saying the same things, and bored with hearing the same words on tv or in conversation.

I believe the Lighthouse curriculum refers to words like these as dead words. Dead words have been so overused or misused that they express absolutely nothing at all. "Expired" words are not encouraged at Lighthouse.  We make a concerted effort to develop vocabulary from the time our students are reading until they go on to high school--by providing and encouraging lots and lots of variety, quality, and quantity in reading materials; by incorporating vocabulary exercises in our spelling curriculum; by giving students many opportunities to create and give oral presentations; by refusing to speak "down" to our students, even the smallest ones.

In the poem, "Speaking With Conviction," Taylor Mali, a former teacher and current comedian and slam poet, highlights some current cultural speech oddities and the importance (and disappearance) of declarative sentences. He performs his poem in the following video, his words illustrated by typography student Ronnie Bruce. We played this video for the junior high students today, and their grins and laughter were telling. Please take a minute to laugh a bit and learn from his point of view (Click on the photo below, click the white arrow in the window that comes up,  and make sure the sound is up):

I want to find words that reflect my conviction. I want my children to believe that it matters whether or not they use deep, thought-provoking words; to believe that people will listen when they speak; to believe that it's preferable to use every ounce of intelligence they've been given, and not hide it away for fear of being called a loser.  Today, I'm pulling out my thesaurus, I'm committing to less time on facebook and more time reading Bonhoeffer, Twain, and Dickinson. I'm going to pay more attention to the words my children hear when they ask me what I think.

I challenge you to do the same. Let's teach our children to speak with confidence and conviction!

It's Never About the Money

When you hear the words "faith-based" at Lighthouse, the idea behind the words has everything to do with actively engaging in a relationship with God.

It's never about the money. And it's all about the money. That sounds like a contradiction, but is it?

The Lighthouse board and administration are confident that the Lord led our school to adopt a new (and some would say radical) tuition model we call "faith-based", in which individual families undertake to engage with God about the use of their resources--all of their resources: money, time, talent, intellect, energy, goodwill...the list is rich, thanks be to God.  I believe that the board's priority was to lead the Lighthouse families to first submit wholly to God, and second to submit to God specifically with regard to their resources. It's the submission and engagement that matters most.  It's never really about the money. It's about exercising faith in a God who engages.

In truth, "faith-based" should apply to any tuition model, regardless of whether it revolves around a tuition amount that is hard and fast, or a tuition amount that is determined by each individual family's assessment of God's leading.  One model "risks" the possibility that not enough students will enroll because not enough families can afford the hard and fast tuition amount. Another model "risks" the possibility that not enough money will come in because families will feel free to treat their tuition commitment with less than full submission. 

In either case, the exercise of faith in God's provision is the key. If the students come, God will have provided them; God will have provided the resources families need to achieve the goal they believe he has led them to pursue; God will provide the means to honor the commitment a family makes to pay their tuition. Dare I say that may mean a family must choose to borrow the funds in order to honor their God-inspired commitment and trust God to provide the means to pay the loan back? It's never about the money, it's all about faith in God's provision.

But I believe it's all about the money, too. Why? Money is something we like to have "enough" of. If you say that's not true, I think you aren't being honest with yourself. Having enough money--however we measure what "enough" is--helps us feel "safe" and can even serve, falsely, to validate or invalidate the path we've taken.  Lots of money? "Why, I must have chosen what God intended, because he is blessing me financially."  Not enough money? "Well, then I must have taken the wrong path in life. God is displeased."  I believe that this attitude turns money into an idol. I can say this because I am the chief sinner. In terms of exercising radical faith, there are few areas that hit me harder than the financial area.

Imagine for a moment that instead of giving money the idolatrous power to validate or invalidate our life choices, we recognize money as simply one tool in a toolbox that God created for our good. Other tools in the box are named health, joy, children, talent, creativity etc. Each is designed to elicit a faith response from us.  Each affords us the opportunity to use them as possessions for our own selfish desires (idol worship) or to freely offer them back to God for use in His hands (true worship).

In this capacity, money has no other value than as God's tool used for our good. He doesn't need it to provide for himself, for he "owns the cattle on a thousand hills". He says in Job 41:11, "Who has a claim against me that I must pay? Everything under heaven belongs to me." Money itself is not necessary for God to accomplish his purposes or to do his work.  But he knows that the quality of our "work"--"to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever" according to the Westminster Confession--depends on what we trust. The depth with which we trust in money or resources holds great sway over how we feel and what we choose. The person with much is tempted to believe that his riches keep him safe; the person with little is tempted to believe that his poverty takes away his safety. Obviously, in some senses this is true: money cures many ills, literally. And the pain of poverty can be crushing. But in the eternal perspective (which we must take as followers of Christ), the opposite is true: annointed poverty is freeing (think lilies of the field and the poor in spirit), and idolatrous wealth is enslaving (think camel and the needle's eye and the rich young ruler). And so God lovingly wields the tool of money to reveal our idolatry and teach us to trust him.

The fact of the matter is that God wants us to trust him for our needs--daily. What if our money behaved more like the manna in the desert? God gifted the Israelites with a commodity that was self-regulating. It rotted overnight when it was stockpiled. How different our world would be if our money disappeared from our bank accounts overnight, and every day was a new day to experience God's provision from zero.  If we had a particularly profitable day, wouldn't we be quick to distribute all of our wealth, every day, before it disappeared? Wouldn't we be quick to give it to those in need? That actually sounds like heaven to me. It sounds like freedom. It sounds like a wild, joyful, annointed party.

Please understand that I'm not insisting we give our money away every day. That would fly in the face of other equally valid ways of using money for God's glory, and undermine the God-prescribed use of resources for sabbatical rest—after all, God allowed the Israelites to gather and squirrel away two days worth of manna in preparation for the Sabbath. And obviously, God could have made money like manna and he chose not to. But I encourage you to use illustrations like this to think creatively about money as a God-designed tool which provides opportunities to glorify God and trust him.

So, now is the time to re-evaluate our response to the call to radical faith in God's provision. What is he calling you to gain by giving away? What is he waiting to bless you with spiritually? Where is he using the tool of money in your life to reveal your heart toward him and your faith-response to his provision? I challenge you to engage in a mighty way with God this year.  Because it's all about the money. Because it's NEVER about the money.