The LORD is with us in the fire.
Dear Parents and Friends of CCS,
May this issue of Parent News find you experiencing the grace and goodness of God!
As I write, our community is grieving the passing of Dr. Justin Cummings, father of two CCS students.
As we walk this road together yet again this year, I was struck in my daily reading of the Word as I came upon Matthew 1, especially the famous passage in verses 18-25.
Here we find out that Mary is with child by the Holy Spirit, and that she will bear a Son.
An angel of the Lord appeared to her husband Joseph, who has faithfully supported her in this most unusual circumstance, and he is told to go ahead with the marriage in spite of the situation.
Amazingly Joseph is also told that this son, conceived so unusually, will save his people from their sins.
This fulfills the prophecy recorded from Isaiah 7, written hundreds of years before and quoted in our text for today:
Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel.
God, writing through the apostle Matthew, defines this name Emmanuel as meaning, “God with us”. It is specific to Jesus the Messiah, carrying with it the sense that not only is Jesus with us, but He also saves i.e. rescues us.
Why is this important today?
Because every one of us is dealing with circumstances that are beyond our control, and that cause pain and suffering. Sometimes that pain is acute, as with the untimely loss of a loved one.
More often, yet just as damaging in the end, the suffering is chronic, as we walk/labor through hard situations that don’t seem to resolve, in spite of our prayers.
This chronic suffering can be debilitating, and that can cause us to either run toward Jesus or away from Him. I’m not sure there’s much in between.
And through it all, Jesus is here, with us. Really with us. Undeniably with us. And since this is true, no matter how we feel about the situation God is indeed right there with us. Right where we are, engaged with the pain.
His Holy Spirit comes alongside us as the Paraclete, the Comforter, the one who has sealed our redemption, and walks with/in us throughout daily pilgrimage. He is as close to us as the air we breathe.
So once again, even in this season of challenge and pain, the Gospel speaks, and the blood of Jesus speaks a better word. We lament, we cry out to the Lord of Glory, and over time we feel His promised presence bringing the peace we lack.
God is in the business of rescuing His family, whether it be out of pain or in the midst of it. And all this is based on the settled fact of Jesus’ sacrifice of Himself on our behalf to pay the debt that we could not pay to a perfectly holy God.
And this, my friends, is very good news.
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