Our theme this year is “strong and courageous,” in memory of Mrs. Becky Morton. During her memorial service, Pastor Bjerkaas referenced the opening chapter of Joshua. After the death of Moses, the Israelites had to complete the next step of God’s plan for them – the conquest of Canaan. Joshua needed courage to lead, and the people needed courage to trust God. Granite is likewise entering a new era under new leadership, and change of this magnitude requires courage.
God is worthy of our trust. His character is wholly good, compassionate, and just. His commandments are good and for our flourishing. He doesn’t withhold good things from us (Ps. 84:11), and the suffering He allows is for His glory and our benefit. This does not diminish the pain that brings us those greater goods, but we remember that it is a “light affliction” that works in us a “weight of glory” in the scope of eternity (2 Cor. 4:17).
After his wife died, C.S. Lewis wrote, “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”[1] Profound loss is destabilizing, and grief is our response to that loss. The security and status quo that we’re accustomed to vanishes, as if the ground beneath us has been washed away, and we find ourselves treading water where we’d been standing moments before. Hopes and plans change in a moment. Expectations are left unmet, and we find ourselves sick at heart (Prov. 13:12). Our grief thus has much in common with fear. We must find a new way forward, when what we have known has changed irrevocably. We know that cowardice does not come from God (2 Tim. 1:7), and Scripture repeatedly admonishes against fear.
Along with justice, temperance, and prudence, courage is one of the classical virtues – a golden mean between rashness and cowardice. Courage does not exist in a vacuum, though. As Lewis observes in The Screwtape Letters, “Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality. A chastity or honesty, or mercy, which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions” (Letter 29). We are never given perfect circumstances in our fallen world, so courage is always necessary.
The true test of courage is what we do and hold to, even when the personal cost is high. When I was a child, I was taught that character is who you are when no one is watching. Even if I could get away with the wrong, would I choose to do right? Later, my youth pastor pointed out that “integrity” shared its root with the mathematical term “integer” (Latin integritās). Just as an integer is a whole number, personal integrity is a demonstration of wholeness of character: unity of the soul. As James warns, “a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways” (1:8).
During the next year, our students will face difficulties that test their virtue and their courage to live in accordance with it. The temptation to give in to cowardice in trying circumstances is difficult to resist, especially when our digital world provides so many opportunities that violate chastity, honesty, and the need for diligence. We’re tempted to use shortcuts that require less effort to satisfy our God-given longings for love, friendship, labor, praise, knowledge, and fulfillment. In The Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius glorifies God as the highest consummation of man’s search for happiness:
“O Lord,…
…you are the sole serene
goal in which we may rest, satisfied and tranquil,
and to see your face is our only hunger, our only thirst,
for you are our beginning, our journey, and our end.”[2]
The truth is that God has made us for Himself, and His wholeness provides the only strength worth having.[3] As St. Augustine wrote in his Confessions, “For Thou has made us for Thyself and our hearts are restless till they rest in Thee.” The physical strength we obtain through exercise is beneficial, but exercising ourselves toward Godliness is better (I Tim. 4:8, III Jn. 2). Mercifully, God provides us the Holy Spirit to help us obey His commands, if only we trust Him to be strong for us. As Jesus promised the apostle Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9, ESV).
As we move into this new year with new leadership to face new challenges, we remember the good things God has already done and look forward to His continued work in our community. As parents and educators, we are discipling the next generation to replace us. May God give us His strength and courage as we pursue this holy calling together.
[1] C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed, 3.
[2] Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, trans. by David Slavitt, 84-86.
[3] C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain: “George Macdonald…represents God as saying to men ‘You must be strong with my strength and blessed with my blessedness, for I have no other to give you.’ That is the conclusion of the whole matter. God gives what He has, not what He has not: He gives the happiness that there is, not the happiness that is not. To be God – to be like God and to share His goodness in creaturely response – to be miserable – these are the only three alternatives. If we will not learn to eat the only food that the universe grows – the only food that any possible universe can ever grow – then we must starve eternally.”
Jennifer Ulrich teaches history at Granite Classical Tutorials.
Beautiful. Thanks Jen.