Frame It

My sister Soph wrote an article that is amazing on so many different levels. She originally shared some of the ideas with our staff in early September. She gave me permission to share it in this space...

At our first staff gathering in late August, Dennis DeGroot read the story of the spies who entered the Promised Land to look it over before the people before the people of God entered. Caleb, one of the spies, essentially reminded the fearful people, “I know we can do this because God is with us.” He saw a land flowing with milk and honey which God had promised to give to them. The people saw a land full of giants which made them feel like grasshoppers, by comparison. The eyes with which Caleb saw the land determined how he framed the story.

I think Dennis was preparing the staff the ‘see’ the school for the first time since June. Either we could see it as a construction zone full of dust and challenges, or we could see it as a place where God’s faithfulness was living and active. It would depend on how we framed the story.

At our first staff devotions at school, Mark Nill encouraged us to share parts of our story with each other and our students. Our staff is a story-telling staff. There is a willingness to share significant parts of our story with each other – both the joys and sorrows. I have been so blessed by those stories. Each of those stories are not just ‘me’ stories; rather, they are stories that testify to the faithfulness of God. When framed rightly, they are God stories.

Joe and Adrienne Melissen have just begun a one-year stint in Sierra Leone. Yet ‘Kabala story’ is part of a larger story which has its roots somewhere else.

Psalm 78 reads, “We will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord...So the next generation would know the, even the children yet to be born, and they in turn would tell their children. Then they would trust in God and would not forget His deeds but would keep his commands.” As teachers and parents, we tell our children, our students, the stories of God to testify to the faithfulness of God to the next generation. Stories about us, our past, are then future-oriented. We enrich the present by telling stories about the past to those who go into the future.

This summer I listened to many stories. One of those stories is the doily story. I grew up in a house full of doilies. My aunts made them, they gave them as gifts, my Mom starched them and pinned them to cardboard to dry. Some were tiny, some huge, some colourful. For a long time, an item on a table didn’t look right to me without a doily under it. I have since de-doilied my house except for one special doily. I was cleaning out a closet this summer and I found this special doily. My Mom had given it to me some time ago, but I couldn’t remember the story so I phoned and asked her to remind me of the story. Apparently, my grandmother, who I am named after, made the doily. My mother’s family immigrated to Canada in 1951 and like many new immigrants, they had very little money. Everything was useful for something. The centre of the doily was made out of an old sugar sack. The material was strong, so women would bleach the letters off the bag and use the material for all manner of things – aprons, slips, pillow covers, and...doilies. My grandmother cut a circle out of the sugar sack for the centre of the doily then crocheted trim for the edge and sewed it to the centre.

I love that story because it testifies to so much: my family’s immigrant roots, my grandmother’s work ethic, and her desire and ability to create something from nothing. So I framed the story, so to speak. The doily hangs in a frame on the wall as a testimony of God’s faithfulness to the generation that went before me.
This summer I saved a Starbucks cup that contained one the many lattes I enjoyed. The quote on the cup reads: “Do not kiss your children so they will kiss you back. Kiss them so they will kiss their children and their children’s children.” That’s a very future oriented thought. We love our children and our students so that they will ‘bless it forward.’

Just over 40 years ago, Fraser Valley Christian High School opened its doors. I remember, as a child, my first view of the ‘shoe box’ in a faraway field. I recall Doug Stuart mentioning that one of the parents at the time worked as a volunteer plumber on the job site, wearing his wooden shoes. Forty is a significant number. Unlike the Israelites, who spent 40 years in the desert- the lifespan of a generation who did not enter the Promised Land- those of us who were there then are graciously allowed to experience the blessings of the next generation. We get to live in the dust and mess of the construction and see the beautiful new building which will be the result. God has been so faithful. And because he has been faithful, he will continue to be faithful. The best indicator of future behaviour is past behaviour.

I want to be like Caleb. I want to see with eyes like Caleb; to frame my story, our story here and now in the construction zone, in the light of the faithfulness of God. I want all our stories, including the messy one we’re in now, to be God stories.