It is a stressful time for our senior students and we wish them the very best and ask you to keep them in your prayers. In the past week we have hosted students who are visiting from Takayamamura Junior High School, a small rural community in Japan. It was a great opportunity for students to exchange experiences and appreciate each other’s culture. Also, a large group of Year 9 students have been training for their first Duke’s trek. This training equips students with basic survival skills and requires orienteering skills and a sense of teamwork as they embark on this world respected leadership program.
The activities mentioned here involve students putting themselves in challenging situations. In such instances individuals need to work with peers and teachers to negotiate various levels of difficulty.
With difficulty there is a potential for conflict and a need to work through adversity, resolving the key issues and considering others point of view. These are real life situations and leads us to question; How do we respond when we are put under pressure? How do we treat one another when we undergo adversity? What do we do when we do have a conflict with another person? How can we move forward and leave behind any real hurts and offence? I am sure we have all had to work through such trials in our own lives. This point of conflict is the place where we learn how to live in loving relationships. Easier said than done!
One of the graduate aims of the College, that we have been speaking about in recent weeks, is to equip students with the skills and understanding of how to develop loving relationships. I am not talking about something that is necessarily romantic or just between close friends and family. Loving relationships are often outworked in the most difficult of circumstances between people who don’t necessarily agree with each other but who need to learn how to live together despite their differences.
Love is often tested and is made stronger when it undergoes a test or tribulation. Loving relationships are fundamental to our expression of faith. The Lord Jesus Christ demonstrated God’s love by dying for each one of us on the Cross. He was a man who was sinless and yet he was wrongly accused and was ultimately rejected, beaten and crucified so that we could see the extent of God’s love for each of us.
Often our actions and attitudes are not attractive or loving; we catch a reflection of ourselves and recognise selfish, self-serving attitudes or actions that do not promote a ‘loving community’. Recognising this is a great opportunity for us; recognising our sin leads us to repentance, repentance involves forgiveness of those who may have hurt us or God’s forgiveness of our own selfish actions; forgiveness empowers us to love and live for others. Loving relationships are about a practical outworking of our relationship with the most loving and wonderful God, the Lord Jesus Christ and our relationships with one another. What a bold and mighty aim!
We love because he first loved us. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister. 1 John 4:19-21 (NIV)
