In the last 15 years that I have been teaching at Concordia, we have seen huge changes. Thousands of students have come and gone, dozens of teachers have retired or been hired, administrators have come and gone. Books have changed, names have changed, technology has changed. New school plans have been proposed, tossed out, and proposed again in different variants. Teams have been terrifically successful one year, and terribly unsuccessful the next. So how, you may ask yourself, does a teacher manage to stay focused and keep their students focused as well? Well, it turns out that there is a simple answer for that: Jesus.
You see, while everything around us may be changing, there is one constant in this world. That constant is the absolute, unquestionable, unending, and undeserved love of Jesus Christ. When we look around at the small world of Concordia Lutheran High School, we see trials and tribulations every day. When we venture outside the bubble of our school, the world can seem absolutely terrifying, with fires, wars, threats of war, internal fighting, and more. But the one thing we can always return to is Jesus, and His promises.
It is our job at Concordia to educate our students. We have incredible teachers of math, science, social studies, languages, media arts, ROTC, and many others. But every single one of those teachers is also an educator for Christ and about Christ. Walk into any classroom and you will see the proof of God’s love being taught in one way or another. Listen to a lecture and you can hear the Word being weaved into that lesson. Look at the art produced by our students in our fantastic fine arts areas and you can see the gifts God has blessed them with. Yes, we educate in our core areas, but we educate even more in the area that is our core. Because at Concordia Lutheran High School, everything we do always comes back to that one simple truth which we all know from our youngest days of preschool:
Jesus loves me, this I know,
For the Bible tells me so.
The Bible tells us this, and so does everyone here at CLHS.
God bless you all, and may God continue to bless Concordia Lutheran High School.