This year, we flipped to the last page of God’s story to find our theme: God dwelling with us. Drawn from Revelation 21:3, this theme runs through the whole Bible: God moving closer to his people, not further away. Here’s a bit of what I had the opportunity to share with students and parents last Thursday as we opened school, and why it matters more than you might think.
So, first, a confession. When I’m reading a good book, I sometimes flip to the last page early, just to see how it ends. I tell myself it’s curiosity. Really, I think I just want to know what I’m walking toward before I have to walk through the hard middle part.
This week, at convocation, I asked our whole school community to do that with the biggest story we’re actually part of. Before we walked into a new school year, we flipped to the last page of the Bible.
Here’s how it ends, in Revelation 21:3:
“Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.”
That’s it. Not a courtroom. Not a scorecard. A dwelling place. God, with us.
Once you know how a story ends, you read everything before it differently. So we went back through Scripture and found this same thread running through the whole thing. God walking with Adam and Eve in the garden. God living in a tent with Israel in the wilderness. God’s glory filling the temple. God becoming flesh and dwelling among us in Jesus. God sending his Spirit to live inside everyone who follows him. Garden, tent, temple, Jesus, Spirit. It’s not a series of unrelated Bible stories. It’s one long, patient pursuit of nearness, and it’s been the plan all along.
And if that is who God is, a God who continually moves toward us, it changes how we live in relationship with him and with one another.
Hiding stops making sense. Whatever any of us is carrying – a tough grade, a mistake, a struggle nobody knows about yet -hiding was never actually the safer option. Being seen and known is.
Showing off stops making sense. Achievement still matters. But it was never meant to be the thing that earns anyone’s worth. We don’t need to build a tower up to God. He already came down to us.
What matters then is being present. Not just fixed. Not impressive on our own. Present. Dwelling with God and with the people around us. That’s not a strategy for getting somewhere else. It’s the whole point.
We also talked about what Christian education is actually for: integrating God’s story into God’s world. Here we help students see that God’s story isn’t separate from the world they are learning about. Science, literature, history, relationships, successes, failures; all of it belongs within the larger story God is writing.
And because God moved this close to us, we want to move close to each other too. That’s why we desire to be in partnership with our families, why we want your student known by more than one adult in this building. And it’s why a community as varied as ours, with families from well over a hundred different churches, gets to feel like one people. Not because we agree on everything, but because we’re all being drawn toward the same God who dwelt with us first.
If you’re looking for a way to bring this home, try this question at dinner one night this week: Where did you get to just be yourself today, and where were you tempted to hide something or show off instead? You might be surprised at the answers.
Here’s to a year of dwelling well, together. I am so grateful to get to do that with this community.
With hope and excitement for the year ahead,
Michael Ehrenfried
Head of School, Denver Christian School
