There is something about the start of daylight saving that lifts the spirits. After winter, I appreciate the longer days and the warming sun.
A day in the sun yesterday at the Secondary Athletics Carnival, bathed in sunlight and seeing the efforts and joy of students, has a real air of celebration about it.
Conversely, darkness can also influence us. As a primary school child, my first paying job was as a paper boy working with my younger brother. Each morning we would be up shortly after 4.00am, dressing and heading out into the cold early morning on foot. We repeated this pattern six days a week, ensuring that the papers were in people’s letter boxes or on their front porch by 6.30am. The two things that I remember most distinctly from the job were the bitter cold in winter and the darkness of the mornings.
“Darkness is an interesting thing. It narrows our field of vision...”
There was one delivery on our paper round that neither my brother nor I were keen to make. It was down a long, gravel road with no lights and, at the end of it, one paper to deliver. We would divide our resources to get the job done as quickly as possible and my brother was so determined to avoid this particular delivery that he offered to deliver every other paper in the long adjoining street if I would deliver this one, solitary newspaper.
Darkness is an interesting thing. It narrows our field of vision and, in the shadowy spaces devoid of light, we as young boys, imagined all sorts of potential terrors that, in the summer months we quickly forgot. The idea of light and dark is used often in Scripture and literature to speak to us about life. The follower of Jesus, Paul wrote an encouragement to “live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases God. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them…everything exposed by the light becomes visible…” — Ephesians 5:8b-13.
“ As a School, we actively plan for and seek opportunities to bring the light of God into our relationships and curriculum...”
Part of the broad education of every young person is the development of spiritual character. By this I do not simply mean the ability to choose right from wrong (although that is part of it), but the transformational effect that the light of God can have in our lives when we seek to align our lives with Him and to live as imitators of Christ. This is the heart and vision of Christian Education. As a School, we actively plan for and seek opportunities to bring the light of God into our relationships and curriculum, seeking the fulfilment of Jesus’ prayer “Your (God’s) Kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”.
Scott Ambrose — Principal