Christ is Home
Home. It’s a powerful word. All people are in a search for home—a reprieve from restless doubt and hunger. In Homer’s The Odyssey, Odysseus has his men plug their ears with wax and tie him to the mast of the ship because as he sails home from war, the sirens sing to him an alluring song that will lead his ship against the rocks. The song is deceptively beautiful and, if followed, will lead to destruction. In a culture whose media and schools, both private and public, secular and Christian, sing the siren song of finding your authentic self and being faithful to whom you are, are we singing a truer, more beautiful song that can carry our children home?
We started Capstone because we want to see children find their way home. We are speaking, of course, metaphorically. We want all that the ultimate home promises. Peace, love, contentment, safety, joy. You enrolled your children at Capstone because you ache for home like the rest of us, and you want to point your children to the old, trustworthy paths that will lead them there. We take our students down the old roads taken by the saints who’ve gone before us, and they bear witness to the Way. In the stories we read, the history we visit, the natural world we investigate, the math we marvel at, we work and delight alongside the saints.
St. Augustine identified home as delighting in Christ. In his Confessions, he writes,
“You move us to delight in praising You; for You have formed us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find rest in You.”
Home is in knowing and adoring Christ.
When I was a child, on occasion we would sing a hymn that contemplated, “Here we are but straying pilgrims. Here our path is often dim.” We would sing of one day arriving at home. Christians often sing of a future land, a home on the other side. We journey there. It is language that may sound strange, maybe antiquated as we live in such opulent comfort in our modern American context. In a land of such comfort, it is especially important that we are intentional about delighting in God with our children, our students. They must know that there is something, or rather someone greater for which we long. When all of our children’s successes leave them feeling disillusioned and empty, as they always will (see the short biblical book of Ecclesiastes), they must know deep in their hearts where to turn to find the fullness of home.
In the Old Testament of the Bible, the Israelites longed for the Promised Land that God had sworn to give to their forefathers. The land was the fullness of God’s promise to give them a home of their own. It was safe pasture after generations of slavery, wilderness wanderings, and exile.
The path to the promised land of American abundance seems to go through schools. Perhaps to the greatest degree, private schools are perceived as the highway to that land. Such abundance is typically measured in admission to a great college, large scholarships, collegiate athletics, lucrative careers, the respect of our peers, and the fullness of self-expression. Abundance, therefore, is typically imagined as realizing the dreams of one’s heart. But to what song is the heart listening? There is much navel-gazing in our modern conception of fulfillment. In this culture, our children learn that they will find home within themselves. On that road, we aspire, we achieve, we acquire, we accrue, and we still ache—perhaps especially ache. The song of Self is a siren song.
Like our Jewish fathers in the faith thousands of years ago, we ought to sing to our souls and to our children the promise of a home, an inheritance, a land of abundance and peace when we sing or recite Psalm 37:3-4, 34, “Trust in the LORD and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. Take delight in the LORD and He will give you the desires of your heart. . .Hope in the LORD and keep his way. He will exalt you to inherit the land.” Note that receiving the desires of your heart is conditional. If you delight—yes desire—the Lord, He will give you himself. The promise is not that He will give you prosperity of goods or a fulfilling marriage, or any other life goal. His promise is that He will give you himself! He is the Promised Land.
At Capstone, we teach children to trust in the Lord and shape their experiences with the aim of cultivating delight in Him. Trusting in the Lord means staking our lives on the sufficiency of Christ to bring our souls home. We aim to give our students experiences that foster a desire for more of Christ. As we delight in who He is and walk in the dust kicked up by his feet, we find abundant life, or as some translations put it, “the life that is truly life.” (John 10:10). As we practice virtue and living wisely, their hearts are tuned to and desire more of Christ.
We strive to show our students the delightfulness of God through the content taught, the stories told and read, teaching methods, the words and actions of their teachers and coaches, the heart-shaping habits and traditions within the school, and even the architecture and artwork within the new campus. When our children see and experience that God is delightful, that He is Good, True, and Beautiful beyond compare, they will yield their lives to him, and He will lead them home.