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Posts Tagged "abide"

A Part of Our Rockbridge DNA: A Reflection on Faculty Morning Prayer

October 10, 2024
By Sam Ostransky, Upper School Literature and Theology Teacher

As students come into the building each morning, they hear a strange sound echoing throughout the hallways. It's an unfamiliar sound in schools and buildings to be happening at 7:30 in the morning: sometimes louder, sometimes softer, and sometimes a higher or lower pitch. And then it abruptly stops about three minutes later. The sound comes from Mrs. Kennedy's Physics classroom. But the students hear it every day, so they no longer raise their eyebrows and ears to figure out what it is. It's completely normal to them.

What the students hear each morning is the sound of their teachers singing a hymn a cappella. Since the door is left ajar, the sound travels. From the entrance of the school, you can just make out murmurs set to pitch; as students walk further into the building, the words become more recognizable. School hasn't started yet, so students are unloading book bags and already nibbling away at their lunches, casually hanging out with friends with heels up on their locker doors. To them, hearing adult men and women singing full voice is not strange to them. It's just what their teachers do.

#87: Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty! / Early in the morning our song shall rise to thee; / Holy, Holy, Holy, merciful and mighty! / God in three Persons, blessed Trinity!

Each morning the Rockbridge faculty and staff gather together to sing a hymn and pray together for our students, families, and alumni. This is absolutely one of my favorite things we do. Here's how we do it.

When the bell rings at 7:30, someone picks out a number from a blue Trinity Hymnal. We've all picked one up from a bookrack as we've entered, so we're ready. It's a bonus when we're accompanied by a piano or a flute, but we're normally a cappella. Some of us try to sing harmonies—others succeed. And if it’s one of those hymns with the extra verses written beneath the final music staff, we sing all the extras too.

The collection of blue Trinity Hymnals with a solitary gold cross on the front have been gifted to us from various churches as they have updated to the newer red hymnals of the same design. Inside the front cover are stamps of the names of the donating churches. That our hymnals which allow us to sing together do not all come from one church but from several reminds me of the fellowship of families which belong to a myriad of church congregations and denominations but come together to form one Rockbridge. The Trinity Hymnal has been a new hymnal to me, but it has nearly all of my favorites.

#122: O ye heights of heav'n, adore him; / Angel hosts, his praises sing; / All dominions, bow before him, / And extol our God and King.

That our hymnals which allow us to sing together do not all come from one church but from several reminds me of the fellowship of families which belong to a myriad of church congregations and denominations but come together to form one Rockbridge.

After singing, we pray for current Rockbridge families and for alumni, selecting about five or six families each day. There's even a binder labeled "STAFF MORNING PRAYER LIST" to make sure we don't miss anyone, moving alphabetically through a roster of family names throughout the year. If you are an alumni, please know that we still pray for you by name. Your teachers delight in remembering you. For current families, please know that we pray for your entire household by name. As an Upper School teacher, praying for Grammar School students is how I have come to know the students who will one day be in my classroom.

If you are an alumni, please know that we still pray for you by name. Your teachers delight in remembering you.

We also take prayer requests for the faculty and staff for the day. It is here that we have shared in some of the greatest joys in each other's lives while also lamenting the greatest of sorrows. In a way, to pray for someone is to truly know them because it is to properly see them, their joy, or their sorrow in relation to God's ever-present care. Similarly, to be prayed for is to be known. It has meant so much to me on the days when I have asked my colleagues to pray with and for me.

 It is here that we have shared in some of the greatest joys in each other's lives while also lamenting the greatest of sorrows. 

The hymn, the prayer requests, the fellowship of prayer. This all happens in about ten minutes. And I'm so glad it does. It would be so natural to start the day together but to do so merely for the sake of making announcements and reminders about the day. And while we do sometimes have those, the focus is on preparing our hearts for the people and the learning of that day. As the school begins to be filled with students, it is also filled with prayer asking God to guide, to protect, to nurture our students.

I wanted to know when this rhythm began and how it had evolved, so I went about asking those teachers who were starting school days fifteen, twenty, or twenty-nine (!) years ago. All of them said the same thing: it’s one of those things that everyone remembers doing but doesn’t remember when or how it started. It struck me that singing to God and praying to him are just a part of the DNA of Rockbridge. Just as we don't remember learning to brush our teeth or how to tie a knot, at Rockbridge we sing to God and pray to him because it is part of the fabric of who we are.

#492: Take my voice, and let me sing, / Always, only, for my King. / Take my lips, and let them be / Filled with messages from thee.

 It struck me that singing to God and praying to him are just a part of the DNA of Rockbridge. Just as we don't remember learning to brush our teeth or how to tie a knot, at Rockbridge we sing to God and pray to him because it is part of the fabric of who we are.

 

Posted in School Culture

The Discipleship of Godspeed

September 27, 2023
By Mr. Roy Griffith, Headmaster

Abide in me, and I in you.
As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me…This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.

John 15:4, 8

It’s official. School is underway. New friends, new teachers, and new things to learn. Back-to-School Night heralds the fall equinox. Shorter daylight hours and earlier bedtimes are now the rule of life. The devil-may-care pace of summer is a distant memory, giving way to a repeating regimen of alarm clocks, car-pools, task lists, packed lunches, homework, and that much welcomed head-on-pillow moment at the end of each day. 

To be sure, the sober reality here at the close of September is that we’re not talking about just one day. This same rinse-and-repeat cycle lasts until the end of May. And while some of us thrive in the routine that comes after Labor Day, for others, well …not so much. More than one kindergartener riding home in the car from their first day of school has been known to say, “Well, kindergarten was fun, Mommy, but what are we doing tomorrow?” 

Returning to the “dailies” of back-to-school life, however, has one spiritual benefit for both students and adults. It creates a perfect opportunity to test how well we are truly abiding in Christ. There’s nothing better than a well-oiled routine to tempt us into striving in our own strength.  Before we know it, having let go of the Vine, our hearts dry out, and the fruits of our labor sour and shrivel.

This is true for students as well as adults. If you notice the next fifth grade Latin quiz becoming a source of inordinate anxiety, or a speech deadline for a teen is growing into a mountain too steep to climb, examine their vine. If the novel for Lit class has become a job rather than a joy, or you find that math homework has settled into a nightly wrestling match, take time to examine the root. Too easily, our yokes become uneasy and all burdens turn to fright.

All the while, Jesus bids us to abide in the Vine and recoup peace and flourishing. But what does “abiding in the vine” even mean? It is an abstract metaphor for adults, much less for children. How, in the tangle of it all, do we return to being disciples, students of Christ?

Calibrating our Speed
One way to stay connected to Christ in the day-to-day is to calibrate our speed. Think about it this way. Delicious fruit can only grow at the speed at which God designed. Tomatoes on a vine take 20-30 days to fully form from the blossom, then another 20-30 days to ripen. Barring weather and soil differences, that means seedlings planted in early May won’t have fruit ready to slice for your summertime cheeseburger from the grill until Fourth of July. God has hardwired the speed of ripening tomatoes on the vine. We should challenge our children and ourselves to think the same about any activity of our day if lived in the vine of Christ. If we want to abide with Jesus, we need to match His providential pace. The book of Galatians calls it, “keeping in step” with Him.

For example, remind your children that we typically do math homework every night because it takes time and repetition to master. God made it that way. Resolve to do math at His pace so that He can take part in the work with you. Ask yourself practically, do I pray with my child as they sit down to do math homework, and do we ask for the Lord to light the path? God wants to answer that prayer, and He is faithful to do it… even on nights when the math gets crunchy. Likewise, encourage a slow reader that such slowness is not necessarily abnormal. The ultimate goal, even for the bibliophiles among us, is to read carefully enough to enjoy the story as it reflects off what we know about God’s Word. Suddenly reading is an adventure.

In the same way, when art students sit down to draw at Rockbridge Academy, they are always reminded to move their eye carefully and, “draw what they see.” They are to observe what the Lord has created and allow brain and pencil to connect. Only then will line begin emulating reality on paper. Developing a capacity for keen observation like this is itself a lost art. I guarantee cultivating a pace for observation, even through sketching, will make them better scientists, better theologians, better problem solvers, not to mention better listeners in important conversations.

Shifting Gears
This does not mean, however, that God intends everything to be done at a horse-and-buggy pace. He makes different tasks to be done at different speeds. When racing for the ball on the soccer field, the athlete always determines to get there before the opponent. And the God who makes lightning flash and horses gallop is cheering them on. Similarly, when your seven-year-old empties the trash after dinner, remind him that Jesus, “set his face like flint” toward his task in Jerusalem, so likewise be intentional. Again, the point is not fast or slow, but that we are students of His pace.

Keeping in step with Christ and matching His pace, therefore, means the ability to shift gears. While any student will rush about to get ready for school in the morning, helping them learn the discipline of setting aside 5 minutes or more to get alone by themselves, open their Bible, and downshift to the speed Jesus set for humans to read with contemplation takes practice for emerging adults.

Godspeed
To say it simply, we begin to abide in Christ when we learn to do things at Godspeed (literally at God’s speed). Godspeed is an archaic blessing of farewell that comes from the Middle English phrase God spede you ("God prosper you"). It is a direct nod to the New Testament idea that a prosperous life is one lived in the Vine. When we match our speed to His, we become a student of Christ and find that the God of the Universe delights to run alongside us.

One of the best pictures of this is when our top varsity cross-country runner takes on the assignment of setting the pace for a novice at practice. In generous humility, the fastest runner on the team comes alongside the slowest and least trained, running slightly above the lagging runner’s pace, lending guidance, hope, and the will to finish. Instead of quitting, a novice runner will keep in step with a champion. Isn’t abiding in the Vine just that? As we trust Christ enough to match our pace to His, He promises to come alongside and patiently lead us to a faithful finish. And often, it’s there we find more fruit than we had ever imagined.

There have been many disparate streams flowing into my greater understanding of abiding in Christ with Godspeed, not the least of which is that this wonderful word has been the often-repeated blessing of our friend and colleague, Nathan Northup. For the almost two decades that Nathan walked the halls of Rockbridge Academy, he is most often remembered for uttering this blessing to colleague and student alike. In addition, personal rumination on John 15 over the summer has been a poignant source of understanding that the act of discipleship flows from the act of abiding, matching my pace to His. I commend John 15 to you for further study. Finally, there is also a great resource I recommend to our community. Godspeed: The Pace of Being Known is a wonderful Christian video documentary out there that is worth a look.

It’s going to be a great school year. Personally, I look forward to becoming a better student of Christ, and I pray the same for all of us.

Godspeed!

Posted in School Culture

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