The Principal's Desk

  The Importance of Ordinary Faith So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life - your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life - and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Romans 12:1 (The Message) ______________________________________________ The landscape of modern evangelicalism is riddled with curious ideas of faith. One of the most prevalent is the idea of “extraordinary” faith. If you’ve grown up in the church you know what I’m referring to. Christian faith has been adorned with adjectives like “radical”, “passionate”, “visionary”, and “relentless”. At conferences and in Christian literature, we are bombarded with the idea that the only way to be truly Christian is to live extraordinarily, to do something big for God. We elevate those with impressive testimonies as the poster children of our faith. And, if we’re honest with ourselves, until we achieve ...

Excellence vs. Effort Humility and Perseverance in the Classroom ___________________________________________________________________________________ Mowing Fields When I was in middle school, I wanted more than anything to have a job. Growing up in a small town, it wasn’t difficult to find work if you were 14-16, but if you were 12, that was a different story altogether. So, I decided that I would take matters into my own hands. I borrowed my parent’s lawnmower, and proceeded to push it all over the neighborhood. I would push it up and down the street, knocking on peoples’ doors to ask if they needed their yard mowed. Many politely turned me down, some agreed to let me mow their yard, and others were just annoyed that I was pushing this raucous lawnmower up and down the street.   There was one family in particular that gave me a job I was beyond excited about. They asked me if I would be willing to mow the field behind their house for $100! I thought to myself, “I can retire with t...