Message from Jeff Blake, High School Teacher

PC Family,

Our high school students have decided this year to pursue “Our Real World” as their theme. Honestly at the beginning of the year, the theme seemed a little clumsy and I was not sure of its potential to set a spiritual tone for our year.

Equally, our planning this summer seemed a little awkward at times especially at our student leadership retreat where the students seemed to forget the spiritual mission for which they had originally committed. I feared there was a little too much “real world” at play. Yet as we finished our last night of leadership retreat, hearts began to soften. God, our Creator, was still creating. God was on the move, and I saw it.

I am embarrassed to admit that I doubted my own prayers of desperation. I feared there was something I was doing wrong as their teacher. And in that fear I submitted to the lie that their spiritual formation is up to me.

This summer, 2 months passed before it dawned on Lisa and I—that we were pregnant AGAIN. The Creator, had secretly began to knit within my wife, a whole new life. Our Creator is still creating. The Creator often moves in places far from the reach of my awareness. Surely He is working in you and I such places even NOW.

At high school retreat, we witnessed (in part) of the work of His creative Spirit. God took our disjointed elements of planning and wove them into something which exceeded my wildest expectations. Our Creator is on the move in our students’ real world. May they journey even closer toward the likeness of Christ.

May we continue to pray for the Creator to mold and shape us all increasingly into the image of Christ, not as drones but as unique and creative reflections of the One who taught us how to live and love.

Jeff Blake

"All things came into being through Him, and without Him not even one thing came into being that has come into being."
(John 1:3)