Dear Parents and Friends of CCS,
I hope this edition of Parent News finds you safe, well and walking closely with the Lord of Glory!
We here at CCS are fervently praying for the safety of all of our CCS family in light of the upcoming storm.
We will keep you updated as power and connectivity allows throughout the weekend regarding school status next week.
For many in our community, this storm adds another layer of stress that is unwelcome and further complicates their already overburdened lives.
It is at these times that we should pull away for even a few minutes and pray.
Author Mark Vroegop has said that Biblical lament is “prayer in pain that leads to trust.” Many of us get the first part, but have yet to experience the latter part. Prayer, especially corporate prayer, has been for centuries an effective vehicle to allow us to move safely through that journey.
As we experience this movement through lament, we begin to experience the trust in God that only He can provide (though we do have a choice to make in that).
This trust in who He is and what He’s like, when accurately appraised, leads us inexorably to hope. This hope is durable, existing in the midst of the suffering as much as it would if the suffering were lifted.
This hope then leads us to deep contentment, a reality that is built solidly upon our identity in Jesus. And this profound contentment is the soil where real joy can emerge over time, a joy that cannot be disturbed by the world and all the devil can throw at us. We begin to know victory, a life steeped in the peace and power of the LORD of glory.
Of course, this all sounds very “pie-in-the-sky” and many of my readers will be saying right about now, ”Easy for you to say—.you don’t know my situation”, especially in the face of an impending hurricane!
True enough, but I do know and have experienced enough of God’s work in my own family's life to be able to say these things with a humble conviction born of real struggle.
There is no replacement for this journey that we are on towards Jesus. And there is no real skipping from lament to joy. It is a process, one best undertaken with fellow believers who know the way through.
In Matthew 26 we see Jesus moving through this process in real time in the garden of Gethsemane, as a real man who was also God, fully knowing that He would be abandoned on the cross by the rest of the Trinity with whom he had known perfect and joyous fellowship forever.
What an unfathomable sacrifice for Him to make, for our great good and His great glory!
In this passage Jesus says to His inner circle,
”’Stay awake and pray, so that you won’t enter into temptation. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.’ Again a second time, He went away and prayed. ‘My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, Your will be done.’
And He came again and found them sleeping, because they could not keep their eyes open. After leaving them, He went again and prayed a third time, saying the same thing once more.
Then He came to the disciples and said to them, ‘Are you still sleeping and resting? See, the time is near. The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.’” Matt. 26: 41-45 CSB
Real prayer is like this. It is visceral, raw and heartfelt. And it is not always answered in the way we would like it to be, because our good Father in heaven always knows best.
The very act of faith-filled prayer in a broken, largely pagan world and a consumeristic Church culture is a radical act of subversion to the principalities and powers and the forces of evil that temporarily rule in this world (see Ephesians 6).
Through our persistent asking, God will hear and act in a way that is ultimately for our greatest good and His greatest glory. And we will come to see over time that there is no appreciable difference between those two perspectives.
Now may God the Father, His Son Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit who proceeds from them, receive all of the glory as we continue to move step by step toward becoming a truly extraordinary school, for the greater glory of God.
For CCS and the Kingdom,
Tom
