Monday, July 28, 2008

Love, love, love, love (feel free to hum along)

The theme of love keeps coming up all around me. That is just sooooo like God. It's that time of year when I begin "full steam ahead" into school planning. I had decided at the end of last year that our first Bible lessons this year would be about love. In my classroom, in a private Christian school, I have the privilege to explore with children how God meant for us to love one another. You see we are not just an assortment of people there to learn reading, writing, and arithmetic; we are a community of believers there to love and support each other while we learn reading, writing, and arithmetic! We are there as a community of believers to draw closer to God and each other. I just love that about teaching in a Christian school. I’ve taught this way for so many years now that I’m not sure I could do it any other way. I have the blessing of not only being able to talk about God openly, but He's part of the curriculum!

For all the Christian teachers out there teaching in the public school systems, you have my admiration and thanks for teaching God’s values and love to your students without violating school board policies and politically correct requirements. You are true missionaries and heroes in the Kingdom and greatly appreciated!

For our study, I don’t want us just to study how much God loves us – that alone is an amazing study! I really want to dig in with my students and begin to develop an understanding of how He requires us to love each other. As I was getting ready today this quote came through in an email from Real Simple magazine's quote of the day:

“Love is not blind–it sees more not less. But because it sees more, it is willing to see
less.” Rabbi Julius Gordon

I love that! Here’s how God said it:

Proverbs 10:12
Hatred stirs up dissension, but love covers over all wrongs.

Proverbs 17:9
He who covers over an offense promotes love, but whoever repeats the matter separates close friends.

1 Peter 4:8
Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.

May we learn to love each other the way the Father loves us!

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.
1 John 4:7

1 comments:

Hannah said...

Jeanne,
Thank you for sharing your heart. I admire your desire to love your students and to teach them to love eachother as much as God loves them. The same passion u have is shared by most of our teachers at wright and I'm so glad I get to be a part of it.
I miss having u as a teacher, because of the heart to heart talks that we had -like what u shared here. (Maybe I'll e-mail u some time...)
I'm no teacher, but what u shared really spoke to me. It's hard to describe, but I have a few things on my heart right now and the whole love thing...well, i just needed to hear what u had to say.
I see God working through you in ways that only he can truly understand. Thank u for letting him. He is an amazing God...he is love.
He is not blind-he sees more not less. But because he sees more, he is willing to see less.
May we all learn love the way our Heavenly Father loves us.