It has been an awesome year so far, and crazy that we are halfway through the 3rd quarter already. Middle school can be an interesting time for a lot of kids, but seeing how the students at RVMS are working hard, collaborating and learning with their teachers and peers has been a rewarding experience. We have a lot of really cool things going on here, and I want to highlight a few of them this week.
Las Vegas, Nevada. The Little White Wedding Chapel. Rob waits in his car in the drive-thru. The driver of the convertible ahead of him honks several times, excited, joyous. The couple shares a kiss, takes a handful of selfies, pops open a bottle of champagne, and drives off.
As we continue to highlight cornerstone programs at Reede Gray, this month I’d like to spend some time highlighting The Cardinal Way! Reede Gray is a Positive Behavior Interventions and Support (PBIS) school At its core, PBIS is an integrated framework of evidenced based interventions that create a coordinated, systematic effort to teach behavioral expectations across the school setting. In the same way we know students learn academics, we work to educate our students on behavior expectations in the same manner.
Grace and peace to you from God our Father, and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. Of late, I have been thinking and processing much on the question “What does peace look like?” Certainly, this is a question worth pondering on! The best I can come up with in this sinful world, throughout the history of the world is found in St. Luke 2:14: “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” As the God/man Christ Jesus entered into this world, in a humble estate; this may just be the one time when there was peace in that moment! But peace, by definition, has been sought after since the beginning of time, yet equally has been most elusive! It might be helpful to begin by understanding what peace doesn’t look like. Peace does not look like people demanding their own way and that others must agree or else! Peace does not look like the usage of manipulation, intimidation, and other fear tactics for the sake of submissiveness and or oppression. Peace does not look like lies, deception, and trickery that others might be fooled into a belief. “Peace is not absence of conflict, it is the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means.” (Ronald Reagan) I sometimes wonder if this sinful world even desires peace or if it is only talked about as something which would be nice to have. Peace, true peace, requires much work and a “my way or the highway” mentality just will not fit the bill! Peace requires diplomacy; the ability to compromise, agree to disagree, and understanding. When we use the Word of God as “the” guide we will find such things as understanding, compassion, and acceptance. In this sinful world, full of debauchery, “the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives. He came to save them from the punishment of sin.” (Luke 9:56) We must ask ourselves, do we really want peace, or do we thrive in chaos? For if we truly want peace, we would all strive much harder for achievement using God’s Word as the criteria needed for such an achievement. Christ Jesus showed us the way, Christ Jesus told us the way, Christ Jesus took victory over sin, death, and the power of the devil. With this in mind, we can have peace if we are willing!
I have the sense that winter in Minnesota after Christmas has a kind of hunker down feeling. There is busyness leading up to Christmas and New Year’s Eve. There are parties, gatherings, shopping, cooking, programs and the like. Once all of that is over we hit January and there isn’t a big holiday to work and plan around. The weather typically gets to the coldest that it gets all year and people tend to stay at home and indoors a bit more. Perhaps part of that is post-Christmas recovery, and part of it might be that there isn’t as much going on, or so it seems. So sometimes these months feel like quiet or even unimportant months (unless you are love ice fishing or are involved in basketball, of course)
Today we will consider words. Words are the building blocks of language. People use words for all kinds of reasons. People use words to convey ideas and emotions, to connect to other human beings, and to navigate, shape, and understand the world. It’s like I always meant to say: Words is good, man.
