From the Principal

Dear Friends,

When the announcement was made yesterday to extend the lockdown in Melbourne another seven days, I admit to a brief but almost overwhelming cloud of despondency and gloom settling on my mind. It wasn’t born of anger or frustration, or the hypocrisy and madness I sometimes reflect on about politics and pandemics. I think it was more about the loss of hope that lockdown has on our psyche, on our soul; about the feelings of helplessness in the face of the series of maddening cycles of freedom and restrictions, coercion and shaming, and the dependence on pathetically stupid statistics that the new experts spout off daily. Of course, none of this takes away the reality that I don’t ever want anyone to be infected by Covid-19 or to succumb to its potentially dreadful effects.

What brings me back to the cloud’s silver lining and dismisses this gloom, is the sunlight of the overruling providence of God in the long term. Unfortunately, we are conditioned by our modern society to have an expectation of quick fixes. But I am sure the Apostle Paul’s categorical view that all things work together for good to those that love God, to those who are called according to His purpose, is a rather big picture and long-term view. Paul’s conviction here, rendered complaining unthinkable. His responses to immediate life and death problems were made in the context of ultimate goals. When we are called according to a high purpose, then love trusts even when it cannot discern. God’s purposes ultimately unfold exceedingly well for those He has called into a loving partnership. Meanwhile, we take each step, each short-term goal, each week in trust that the journey is God-appointed. 

Christian communities are called into both a relationship and partnership with God, according to His purpose. Perhaps it is helpful to reflect on the difference between relationship and partnership, but I want to emphasise the latter here. Our calling as a staff at Oxley is into partnership with God, to join His purpose of educating children in the various gardens of delight that are the learning disciplines. His purpose is for children to have the grammar and knowledge of each discipline in order to understand His truth, goodness and beauty as revealed in the creation. His purpose is that children feel the mystery and awe embedded in knowledge that points to the Creator and to Christ through whom and for whom it was all made. His purpose is for children to experience the delight God takes in His creation and to know that it is a gift to them. His purpose is that a Christian Education will sensitise children towards the Spirit, the same Spirit who hovered over the deep at the time of the creation of the cosmos. His purpose is the redemption of people from gloom, madness, deceit and death into a life that ultimately shares in His wisdom, truth, holiness and glory, alongside His future redemption of the cosmos from decay into regeneration. 

This is the educational project we are in partnership with. This is the wisdom and providence of God. This is the long-term goal that has always been so. I encourage our reflection on this section from Proverbs 8.

Wisdom is calling!  ...

THE LORD made me as the beginning of His way,

the first of His ancient works.

I was appointed before the world,

before the start, before the earth’s beginnings.

 When I was brought forth, there were no ocean depths,

no springs brimming with water.

 I was brought forth before the hills,

before the mountains had settled in place;

 He had not yet made the earth, the fields,

or even the earth’s first grains of dust.

When He established the heavens, I was there.

When He drew the horizon’s circle on the deep,

 when He set the skies above in place,

when the fountains of the deep poured forth,

when He prescribed boundaries for the sea,

so that its water would not transgress His command,

when He marked out the foundations of the earth,

I was with Him as someone He could trust.

For me, every day was pure delight,

as I played in His presence all the time,

playing everywhere on His earth,

and delighting to be with humankind.

Warm regards,

Douglas Peck