Last week I shared our staff core value, “Making Christ the centre of everything we do.” Another core value closely related to that is “Aligning our loves and longings with those of Jesus and encouraging our students to do the same.”
This core value came from a reading I shared during staff devotions that year. It was a brief section from the book “You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit” by James K.A. Smith. Smith is a Canadian-American theologian, philosopher, and author and he wrote:
Discipleship is more a matter of hungering and thirsting than of knowing and believing. Jesus’s command to follow him is a command to align our loves and longings with him – to what God wants, to desire what God desires, to hunger and thirst after God and crave a world where he is all in all – a vision encapsulated by the shorthand “the kingdom of God.” Jesus is a teacher who doesn’t just form our intellect but forms our very loves. He isn’t content to simply deposit new ideas into your mind; He is after nothing less than your wants, your loves, your longings. His “teaching” doesn’t just touch the calm, cool, collected space of reflection and contemplation; He is a teacher who invades the heated passionate regions of the heart.
This resonated with the staff and in the same ways we always want to guide students to love God, love others, and love learning, we want them to love and desire what God loves and desires – not to become filled with those that world tries to instill in them.
Justin DeMoor