Prayer Letter: January 2023

Tuesday, January 3 - Friday, January 6:

Please join us in thanksgiving for the start of a new year! The ICS office opens again today, so we pray for staff, faculty, and students as they return from their various travels and holiday festivities that they may all be refreshed from the time away and energized to jump into the work and projects the new semester brings! 

Today, we ask for your continued prayers for the ongoing search for a new Senior Member. After virtual ‘campus visits’ in December, candidates will continue with the next steps in the process during the month of January. First is an interview with the Search Committee on the 5th, then an interview with the Senate on the 21st. Please pray for wisdom all around during the course of this search process and committee deliberations.

We ask for your prayers this week for our Senior Members who are making their final teaching preparations for this term’s courses: Ron Kuipers, Jim Olthuis, Gideon Strauss, Bob Sweetman, and Edith van der Boom. Pray too for Rebekah Smick as she focuses on her various writing projects and continues preparing for ART in Orvieto this summer, and for Nik Ansell as he begins his sabbatical research and writing projects.  

Monday, January 9 - Friday, January 13:

Please pray for our Junior and Senior Members as classes resume this week. As in the fall, all our winter courses will be online, so we pray especially for Junior Members’ encouragement, connection, and insightful engagement in their studies. In addition to various guided readings and thesis writing and projects taking place this term, please take time this week to pray for each of the following courses:

• On Tuesday, starting at 10:00am, Bob Sweetman will be teaching about the fundamentals and contemporary relevance of Reformational philosophy in his course: Religion, Life, and Society. Please pray for Bob as this is the last time he will teach this course before his retirement, and for the students that this will be a time of inspirational learning for everyone in this foundational course. 
  
  
• Also on Tuesday, starting at 6:00pm, this year’s Interdisciplinary Seminar begins: Faith, Freedom, and the Meaning of Politics: Liberalism and Its Discontents. Please pray for the seminar leaders, Gideon Strauss and Ron Kuipers, and the students in the course as they discuss the political liberalism that has shaped the constitutional arrangements of many nations today, and as they explore some of the challenges and current debates among proponents of liberalism, nationalism, and integralism.
  
  
• On Thursday, starting at 6:00pm, Bob Sweetman will begin his course: Spiritual Exercise as Christian Philosophy from Augustine to Bonaventure. Pray for Bob and the students as together they examine the Hellenic and Hellenistic notion of spiritual exercise in order to understand the emergence of ‘Christian philosophy’ as a cultural project within the Augustinian tradition.

Pray also for our MA-EL Winter Retreat taking place this Saturday, and for the two MA-EL courses which will begin this week:

• Finding Joy in Learning with Edith van der Boom, and
  
  
• How to Coach a Strong Team: Leading People, Building Institutional Capacity, and Securing Accountability with Gideon Strauss.

Monday, January 16 - Friday, January 20:

The Academic Council will have its first meeting of the term this week. Among the other matters of academic oversight, the Academic Council will receive and discuss Gideon Strauss’ reflective practice report as a Senior Member. Please pray that this time spent together in deliberation and conversation will provide mutual encouragement to everyone involved. Please also keep the work of the Academic Council in your prayers for the remainder of the term. 

This Wednesday, starting at 6:00pm, Senior Member Emeritus Jim Olthuis will begin teaching his course: Nothing Can Separate Us…!: The Dialectical Materialism of Slavoj Žižek. Pray for Jim and the course’s students as they explore Žížek's incisive structural insights on topics like his faith in the Void as the eternal traumatic Real in contrast with faith in the steadfast Love of God. 

Please pray for MA-EL Junior Member Carla Buckingham who caught RSV in mid-December, was hospitalized a week before Christmas, and is still in the hospital recovering three weeks later. She expects to be released soon and is on the mend, but please pray with us for Carla’s speedy return to full health and for the space to rest and recover without further complications. 

Monday, January 23 - Friday, January 27:

ICS alum Dan Jesse (2008) recently graduated from the University of Aberdeen with a PhD in Divinity and a thesis titled “The Religious End of Sorrow: Resurrecting Sadness through Liturgical Vulnerability.” He also recently published a journal article titled “Over-Generalizing, Under-Promising, and Over-Promising: Singing Sadness and Joy in the Church.” Please join us in giving thanks for Dan’s achievement in reaching this milestone and for his being able to share his research with scholarly peers and the wider community. 

Please pray this week for our Junior Members who still have outstanding work to be submitted from their fall courses. The deadline for submission is on Friday the 27th, so we ask for clarity and creativity as they complete their various assignments, and for dexterity as they balance the work of this semester and last.

This month, Recruitment Coordinator Brenna Werhle takes on the additional part-time role of Assistant Registrar. Brenna will continue in her efforts to recruit new students to ICS courses and programs, and will join Gideon Strauss and Elizabet Aras in the Academic Office supporting our existing Junior Members and students in their studies. We give thanks for all the ways Brenna has served ICS since being hired and for her willingness to take on this new range of responsibilities. 

Monday, January 30 - Tuesday, January 31: 

Our MA and PhD program application deadline is February 1st. Please pray that potential Junior Members may find their way to ICS, that they might discern how ICS can support them in considering the big questions they want to explore, and that they will be able to compile their applications in time to start their programs in the fall. 

The ICS Senate and Educational Policy Committee also meet this month. Please pray for each of these groups as they come together to consider course proposals, academic plans and policies, and various aspects of the teaching and learning that goes on at ICS. We’re grateful for the time, vision, and expertise the members of each of these bodies brings to discussions of academic direction at ICS.

As our 2022 Advent campaign draws to a close, we want to take this opportunity to express our deepest gratitude to all our donors for your uplifting support over the past year. Your faithful and generous gifts of prayer and financial support, month by month and year by year, have been a blessing to us and continue to bolster us in our daily work of providing Christian education. We give thanks to God for each of you, and we start 2023 filled with hope and strength to face what the new year brings!

Thank you for giving generously so ICS can continue to provide an academic home to curious and creative Junior Members!

Dwelling in God’s Beloved Cosmos

“For God so loved the world….”

–John 3:16a

Do you like to gaze at the stars? I do. My only complaint is that all the artificial light pollution in Toronto makes it difficult to see more than just the brightest ones. If I am lucky, sometimes I will see the Big Dipper, the North Star, or Orion’s Belt. I am always astonished, however, whenever I leave the bright lights of the city and am able to make out the dusty white band of the Milky Way or witness the sheer infinity of heavenly bodies that become visible in darker conditions.

I’m not sure why I like looking at stars. They can make you feel frighteningly small and insignificant. As Blaise Pascal laments in his Pensées: “When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in an eternity before and after, the little space I fill engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces whereof I know nothing, and which know nothing of me, I am terrified. The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me….”

I sometimes wonder if the cold and meaningless universe that secular modernity insists upon, and which so terrified Pascal, can be reconciled with the world that scripture calls a cosmos (Greek kosmos, kosmon), the world bathed in God’s creating and healing love. Our reason alone will never tell us that the universe is such a cosmos, even as our hearts, if we listen to them, keep stubbornly insisting that it is so.

Pascal also said that “the heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of,” and with Pascal, I believe we must attend to these heart-reasons. They connect us to something real and vitally important, and their message is more than mere projection or wishful thinking. I have never been able to understand how people can consider the “cold and meaningless universe” picture to be nothing but a simple, neutral description of the facts, and not an interpretive spin emerging from the modern secular assumption that the only possible meaning anything can have is the meaning we impose ourselves. I don’t think it is a coincidence that the universe became cold and silent the very moment we closed ourselves to the possibility that it might speak with its own voice.

One of the main reasons I like to look up at the stars, then, is because doing so makes me spiritually porous. What I see is also seen by many different others, both far and near, and this helps me feel connected to everyone and everything around me. In those moments, I experience something of the God-loved cosmos, the good world where humans dwell below the dome of sky, populated with an infinity of lights, all made with love by the Creator of the stars of night.

As we move forward from Christmas into Epiphany, we finally recall the way a star marked Jesus’ very birthplace, the humble stable where he was wrapped in rags. As we enter the new year, I wish you all the peace announced in our Messiah’s coming: Emmanuel, God with us!

Shalom, my friends!

Ron Kuipers

Glad for Grace

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

—Philippians 4:4-7

As someone who is not overly prone to rejoicing, I am grateful that Paul in his letter to the church in Philippi reminds us not once, but twice, about our capacity and opportunity to do so. With his very next words, he even suggests that through such rejoicing our “gentleness” will become known to everyone. What an interesting claim to make for someone who was accused of “disturbing the city” during his first visit there! (Acts 16:20)

What might Paul have had in mind by gentleness, I wonder? In his first letter to Timothy (3:3), he contrasts gentleness with pugnacious violence. So, we know what gentleness is not. That in itself is important to keep in mind in our age of polarization and mutual suspicion, in which an ever-growing number of people feel no qualms about launching the vilest attacks against strangers under the cover of digital anonymity.

In contrast, Paul draws rejoicing and gentleness into intimate proximity. Our Lord is near, he tells us, and that is cause for rejoicing! Our gentleness will be known to everyone as the expression of our gladness for God’s grace (the Greek words for rejoicing/gladness and grace are cognate). Our Messiah’s nearness, Paul says, even has the power to melt away all our anxiety, as we put all our needs before God with hearts full of thanksgiving.

Grace continues to abound in the final verse, where Paul assures us that God’s peace, which passes all understanding, will guard our hearts and minds. Most philosophers today don’t do too well with the notion of anything ‘passing understanding,’ preferring instead to assume that, through the application of human reason and intellect, we can put the ground under our own feet. Yet, as the reformational philosophical tradition teaches, placing ultimate trust in our own rational capacity (itself a good gift from our Maker) will not lead to peace, but only more anxiety. Ultimately, we are to open ourselves to, and rest in, the peace of God. From that orientation, everything else flows.

I wish you God’s peace this Advent season, friends, as together we raise our expectation for the arrival of the coming Messiah. Rejoice! And again I say, rejoice!

Shalom,

Ron Kuipers

Prayer Letter: December 2022

Thursday, December 1 - Friday, December 2:

Our final Open Class of the fall took place on the evening of December 1, with Edith van der Boom welcoming prospective students into her Transformative Teaching: The Role of a Christian Educator seminar. Please join us in gratitude for this final open class session, and for all the open classes this past semester—for the Senior Members who welcomed potential students into their classrooms and for the students who took the initial steps to exploring what an ICS education might look like for themselves.

Please take the opportunity this week to give thanks for our Board of Trustees as they continue to oversee the mission and vision of ICS. At the Annual General meeting on Saturday, November 19th, we welcomed two new Board members, Colin Conrad and Matthew Blimke, and welcomed Marci Frederick as she now steps into the role of Board Chair. We also gave thanks for four outgoing Board Members: Hilda Buisman, Diane Stronks, Ray Vander Zaag, and John Joosse. We are grateful for the years of faithful service these four have given to ICS, and we pray for wisdom for all our new and returning Board members as they continue to support the work of ICS. 

During the month of December, the CPRSE team is focusing its efforts on a grant application to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) in support of the collaborative Our Whole Society (OWS) conference. Spearheaded by the Canadian Interfaith Conversation, the 2023 OWS conference will gather diverse academic institutions, community organizations, and religious groups around the theme “Finding Common Ground in a Time of Polarization.” Please pray for the CPRSE team and all partner organizations, as they continue to plan and support this important interfaith initiative.

Monday, December 5 - Friday, December 9:

Our Advent Appeal is under way! ICS supporters should have received the appeal package in the mail (if not, it should arrive soon), and we hope you’ve enjoyed reading the latest issue of Perspective that accompanies the appeal! You can also find a digital copy of the Advent Letter from President Ron Kuipers, including a link to donate to ICS, on our website. We are especially grateful during this time of year for the ways God continues to provide for us and for your faithful support of ICS and our educational mission—thank you!

Please pray with us in gratitude for the work of the Educational Policy Committee and the Academic Council this past semester. The members of these committees have spent the past few months reviewing course proposals for presentation to the Senate at their winter meeting, and regularly examining our coursework evaluation practices at ICS. The Academic Council in particular will continue to host Reflective Practice Reports from our Senior Members in the new year. Please pray for each of the members of these two committees as they continue their work into the new year, that they will have wisdom and clarity of thinking, and for Edith van der Boom as she chairs these committees in their academic programming and policy deliberations.

After an extended break, the CPRSE relaunched the Critical Faith podcast with an episode that features LGBTQ+ activist, artist, and York University PhD student Eric Van Giessen. In the episode, ICS President Ron Kuipers talks with Eric about their respective histories in the Christian Reformed Church, their responses to the CRC's recent synod vote to affirm the 2016 Human Sexuality Report, and some aspects of Eric's research. We give thanks for Eric, Ron, and the podcast team for their work in producing and releasing this episode, and we look forward to developing more episodes in the coming year. 

Monday, December 12 - Friday, December 16:

Our search for a Senior Member in Philosophy continues apace with virtual campus visits from the candidates taking place sometime this month. These ‘visits’ include a sample class and a paper presentation from the respective candidates to the ICS community. Please keep these virtual visits in your prayers, that the candidates may prepare themselves well ahead of time and that everyone involved in this process may be granted wisdom and discernment. 

This is the last week of classes for the fall term at ICS and courses in the winter 2023 term are scheduled to start the week of January 9. Please pray for our Senior Members as they wrap up their teaching for this term. Please also pray for our Junior Members as they finish up their course work and turn their minds toward completing their research papers and projects. Please also pray along with us that the holiday break will enable all of us to rest and recharge, and bring all of us back energized for the new year and all it may bring.

The ICS Community Christmas Party is taking place on December 16. We ask for prayer for Elizabet Aras, our Registrar, and President Ron Kuipers as they make plans for hosting the event. This year we are able to have our Christmas Party in person, so pray too that it might be a wonderful evening spent together, giving thanks for and celebrating the gifts we have in one another in this blessed community of learning at ICS.

Monday, December 19 - Friday, December 23:

Senior Member Nik Ansell will be starting an eight-month sabbatical in January. Please pray that this might be a fruitful and invigorating time of study for Nik as he is given the space to focus on his various research plans and projects in the coming months. We are grateful for the extensive amounts of time and dedication that Nik has given to teaching and mentoring ICS students and Junior Members over the years, and we are delighted that Nik will be able to spend this season attending closely to this important side of his work as a scholar and lifelong learner.

Every year, CPRSE invites a wide range of scholars, activists, and community leaders to share their wisdom and experiences with the ICS community in a variety of formats. In 2022, our guests included Patricia June-Vickers, Elisabeth Paquette, Natalie Appleyard, Jennifer Bowen, and Eric Van Giessen. We pray in thanksgiving for the generosity of spirit of these individuals, that their offerings to our community bear fruit.

Christmas break at ICS is taking place from December 24 to January 2, and the offices will be closed during that time. Please pray for the ICS staff, Senior Members, Junior Members, and loved ones as we celebrate this joyous season. We pray for health and safety for all those planning to travel near and far over the holidays, and we pray that this may be a time of rest and reflection for everyone. 

And may the blessings of love, joy, and peace be yours as you celebrate the birth of our Lord and Saviour this Christmas week.

Monday, December 26 - Friday, December 30:

As part of its mission, the CPRSE frequently partners with like-minded academic institutions and community organizations in public outreach events. During 2022, one of our partners was Citizens for Public Justice (CPJ), an organization that seeks to shape public policy through research, publishing, and dialogue. Recently, CPJ published a comprehensive 2022 Poverty Trends Update, which presents how poverty is experienced in Canada today. Please keep CPJ’s important ongoing advocacy work in your prayers this week.

December 31 is the "Early Bird" scholarship and registration deadline for ART in Orvieto 2023. We will continue accepting applications until the end of February for this year’s Artists’ Workshop, Writers’ Workshop, and Graduate Seminar on Art, Religion, and Theology; so please share news of this exciting opportunity with the arts-lovers in your lives! And please join us in prayer that interested participants who would benefit from this learning experience may find their way to us.

As 2022 draws to a close, we give thanks for another fruitful year of work at ICS and for all our supporters, friends, and colleagues who made this work possible through their prayers, financial gifts, and service. We also pray for God's blessings upon our staff, Senior Members, and Junior Members as we pursue wisdom together, in the classroom and beyond, throughout this upcoming year. We look forward to another year of work and study together!

Prayer Letter: November 2022

Tuesday, November 1 - Friday, November 4: 

November 1 is the application deadline for students wanting to enter the MA in Education Leadership (MA-EL) program in the 2023 winter term. Please pray for wisdom for Gideon Strauss and Edith van der Boom as they review the students’ applications this month, and for these applicants as they make space in their lives to embark on a program of graduate study.

Our first Open Class of the fall is taking place on November 2, with Ron Kuipers welcoming prospective students into his Imagining the World with Ricoeur seminar. Anyone interested in finding out what an ICS course is like can RSVP to Elizabet Aras at academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Please pray for this and each of these open class sessions in the coming weeks, that ICS might speak to prospective students’ desires for their future studies.

Also on November 2, Gideon and Edith will be hosting one of our regular writing workshops for Junior Members. Please pray for those Junior Members participating in this event that they might make the most of their time together to share their questions and insights with one another and to strengthen their writing practices.

Please join us in thanksgiving for the successful event on October 27 celebrating the publication of the festschrift in honour of Lambert Zuidervaart, and the second volume of the Currents in Reformational Thought series, Seeking Stillness or the Sound of Wings. We’re grateful for Lambert’s contribution to the Reformational philosophical tradition, for everyone who attended the event in person and online, for each of the presenters and participants who made the event possible, and for everyone involved in the book’s writing and publication process.

Monday, November 7 - Friday, November 11 (Remembrance Day): 

The latest issue of Perspective and our annual Advent Appeal should be making their way to supporters in the mail over the next couple of weeks. This issue includes some deep reflections on the idea of “living tradition,” and we’re excited to be sending it out. Please pray for everyone involved in the final stages of the production process as they bring all the pieces of the mailing together. Please also pray for a strong response to our annual Appeal. We are always impressed and humbled by the faith our supporters place in us, and we thank God for your generosity during this time of year. 

On November 8, Nik Ansell is hosting the Open Class session of Biblical Foundations. Please pray for Nik and for those visiting students that they might spend an inspiring class time together digging into the life-giving scriptures.

Our search for a new Senior Member is moving onto the stage of evaluating the applications we’ve received and reaching out to applicants. We’re grateful for everyone who made the effort to apply. Please pray with us for wisdom and insight for the search committee as they consider these applications and discern who might best fit this position. 

Today, on Remembrance Day, we lift up all those who have suffered and sacrificed in the Great War and in the many wars that came before, that have happened since, and that rage today. Please join us in a prayer for peace:

God of all, remember your holy promise, 

and look with love on all your people, living and departed.

On this day we especially ask that you would hold forever

all who have suffered during war, those who returned scarred by warfare,

those who waited anxiously at home,

and those who returned wounded, and disillusioned;

those who mourned, and those communities that were diminished and suffered loss.

Remember too those who acted with kindly compassion,

those who bravely risked their own lives for their comrades,

and those who in the aftermath of war, worked tirelessly for a more peaceful world.

And as you remember them, remember us, O Lord;

grant us peace in our time and a longing for the day when people of every language, race, and nation will be brought into the unity of Christ’s kingdom.

This we ask in the name of the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Monday, November 14 - Friday, November 18:

Our MA & PhD program Open House is happening on November 16 at 6pm. Please pray that word of this event might reach prospective students to whom ICS would make a nourishing academic and spiritual home, and that those students might be able to discern the vocations, academic or otherwise, to which the Lord may be calling them.

On November 17, Rebekah Smick will be hosting an Open Class for students interested in her seminar, Grace as an Aesthetic Concept. Please pray that the students who attend this Open Class might be intrigued by the aesthetic, theological, and historical insights put forward in Rebekah’s seminar and that they might take steps to join our academic community.

On Friday, November 18, the Board of Trustees will meet online. Please pray for grace and wisdom for our Chair, John Joosse, and all our Board members as they deliberate together on various matters pertaining to the stewardship of ICS’s calling and resources. Please also give thanks with us for those outgoing Board Members who have given generously of their time and talents during their terms of service: Hilda Buisman, John Joosse, Diane Stronks, and Ray Vander Zaag. 

This Saturday, November 19 at 2pm EST, our Annual General Meeting is taking place online. Please pray for John Joosse as he gives leadership to the meeting, for all those who will present reports, and for the time participants will be able to spend together talking about our hopes for ICS. We’re grateful for this yearly rhythm which affords the opportunity to attend to what we’ve accomplished, and the goals to which we aspire institutionally. We also give thanks for this chance to gather with the broader ICS community to reflect together on our educational calling and hopes.

Monday, November 21 - Friday, November 25:

In early October, CPRSE Associate Director and ICS PhD candidate Héctor Acero Ferrer was appointed as Interim Program Coordinator of Martin Luther University College’s Bachelor of Arts: Christian Studies and Global Citizenship program. We thank God for Héctor’s role in the Martin Luther community and for this exciting new opportunity for him to shape undergraduate learning experiences at the school.

There will be an Open Class for The Craft of Reflective Practice with Gideon Strauss on November 24. Please pray that teachers and school administrators can find time in their busy schedules to join this session and get a taste of the tools and frameworks this and our other MA-EL courses have to offer them in their practice as educators. 

On this Thanksgiving Day in the US, we want to share our prayers of gratitude for each and every one of our supporters in Canada, the US, and across the world. Your continued financial, prayerful, professional, and personal support of the day-to-day educational mission of ICS has carried us through the pandemic and keeps us going—so thank you!

ICS alumnus Caleb Ratzlaff was just elected as a new city councillor in St. Catharine’s, Ontario. We congratulate Caleb on his successful campaign! Please also join us in praying for wisdom and ingenuity for Caleb as he takes up his new role and familiarizes himself with how to best represent the interests of his community in St. Catharine’s and support their wellbeing at the municipal level. 

Monday, November 28 - Wednesday, November 30:

The season of Advent begins on Sunday, November 27. On this first Sunday of the season, please join us in the vigilant expectation for peace hearkened to in the words of the prophet Isaiah: “[The nations] shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the LORD!” (Isaiah 2:4-5). We pray that, during this season, and amid the looming darkness, all may awaken more and more to the light of the coming Lord.

ICS Junior Member Jimmy Ronald has been selected as this year’s CPRSE Research Assistant. Jimmy will be an integral part of the Critical Faith podcast team as it reboots production during the coming academic year. We pray in thanksgiving for Jimmy’s presence in our community and for his willingness to serve the ICS community in this role. 

This academic year, CPRSE will once again collaborate with the Canadian Interfaith Conversation—as well as many other community, faith, and academic partners—in the planning of the annual Our Whole Society conference. This conference offers a space for a nationwide conversation about the role of religion in Canada’s pluralistic society. Please pray for the CPRSE, and for the Canadian Interfaith Conversation and organizational partners, as they continue to plan this important event.

As we quickly move into the end of the fall term, we would ask you to please pray for our Senior Members and faculty as they teach in the final few weeks of classes, and as they prepare for their teaching in the quickly-approaching winter term. We also want to express our deep gratitude for the new students who have come to ICS this academic year, as well as all the returning ones. Our students keep us alive in all kinds of ways. So we pray that they may stay in touch with their infectious enthusiasm amid the demands that can be felt as we move towards the end of the semester and as they work to finish up readings and other assignments and as they start to prepare their term papers and projects.

Generations

“One generation shall laud your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts.”

—Psalm 145:4

Giuseppe Penone
The Hidden Life Within

Imagine a large, aged tree before you. What if you could peer inside this tree, and discern the shape of its younger self, secretly housed within the centre of its massive trunk? The Italian artist Giuseppe Penone’s tree sculptures create this very effect, providing a window through which to witness the passing of time in the blink of an instant.

Consider further that, from the point of view of the present, the younger tree is really the aged ancestor from which the larger tree has descended. Think of the way that the tree’s younger shape has, through the years, faithfully contributed to the structure and function of the current tree, helping ensure its stability, growth, and fruitfulness, as each year a new cycle of seasons adds a living layer that depends on the support this sturdy forebear faithfully provides.

Does this image not provide a wonderful way to think of a living tradition of faith? As each generation does its new thing, as it must, it does so in a way that is sustained by and patterned after the contours of what has come before. Psalm 145 speaks of one generation lauding God’s mighty acts to another, as if, by sharing these stories of God’s love for the good, broken world God made, the older generation gives the new one what it needs to continue to grow and be built up in that very faithfulness.

Like other Christian schools, ICS works at this intimate and vulnerable point of connection between the generations. While we arrive on the scene a little later than most other such institutions, we nonetheless participate in the vital work of helping a new generation understand what faithfulness means in these incredibly challenging times. We thereby demonstrate patterns of faithfulness for our students to emulate, patterns which will in turn help them laud our Maker’s mighty acts to future generations.

What are these mighty acts of which the Psalmist speaks? They are acts of liberation and exodus from systems of oppression, domination, and death. They are acts that serve as “good news” for the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the stranger in our midst. They are the everyday miracles that save the world, bit by bit, mite by mite. God’s mighty acts reveal the way God wants us to follow, and Jesus Messiah goes so far as to tell us that the way we pursue justice for those in need is identical to the way we treat God (Matthew 25:31 ff.). When the generation who leads us shows us through the good fruit of their lives how we are to follow our Maker and Redeemer’s shalom way, scripture counsels us to “imitate their faith” (Hebrews 13:7). And just so, another ring grows around the tree.

We join in this work together, friends. Thank you for sharing our efforts to laud God’s mighty acts to future generations!

Shalom, and again I say, shalom!

Ron Kuipers