‘Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends’ (John 15:12-13)
When Jesus talks about love, he is not just talking about a feeling of warm affection. According to that understanding, love is an emotion that we can fall in and out of fairly quickly.
We see expressions of this attitude towards love all of the time. Attitudes that say ‘I just don’t love you anymore’ are common, not only in romantic relationships but also in friendships and family relationships. According to the world’s thinking, when we ‘fall out of love’ with someone, we can sever ties and go our own way. After all, we only have one life to live, and our happiness is what matters most.
Have you ever found yourself on the receiving end of this sort of mentality? Perhaps you have celebrated the beginning of a new friendship, only to find that this person now ignores you. In this world of social media, they might even have blatantly ‘unfriended’ you. Perhaps you have experienced this more acutely with a spouse seeking separation or even a non-spousal family member cutting ties. Or maybe you are guilty of having done this sort of thing yourself.
In this reading, Jesus teaches us about real love, or, what he calls, greater love. This sort of love is not based on our emotions. It’s not self-seeking, nor is it fleeting. It is a form of love that is costly. It involves sacrifice. It might even cost us our lives.
Have you ever wondered what you might be willing to suffer and endure for the sake of someone else? In our human weakness, we can miss the mark, and we may fail to show this type of love. But even then, God wants to forgive us and hold us in everlasting love.
Dear Lord, thank you for laying down your life for me. Forgive me for the times I have loved selfishly, and help me to be more like you. Amen.
Prayer Points
We give thanks for our teachers on World Teacher’s Day for the many different gifts they use to bless our community
We give thanks to God for the refreshing spring rains
We pray that all our families and community members remain safe and well
We pray for the Thang Ngak, Thang and Thuale families
Micah Award
To Zin for demonstrating courage and appreciation throughout remote learning.
To Singopha and Rose for demonstrating compassion to others
I thank God everyday that we have been able to return to some kind of normality in the past weeks and days. As I mentioned in the last newsletter, having the students return to school is so uplifting for our spirits. Hearing the recent news that Melbourne is slowly seeing the easing of restrictions has also added to the hope to which we have been clinging.
Hope. So many aspects of our lives are driven by hope. This has been clearly evident during the trying times recently. At times the messages we received contained little hope, with nothing to look forward to to help us keep going. Without hope, things seemed very bleak.
Current psychological research speaks of the importance that having hope brings to mental health. Now that mental health and wellbeing have become the number one item on people’s agendas, people are searching for hope wherever they can find it.
As Christians, we know that we do not need to search for hope, as our hope comes from God. Hope is one of our school values. It has been carefully chosen because Christian hope goes further and deeper than what people generally understand. Hope enables us to look forward with expectation and confidence, placing our trust and faith in God’s provision of what we need in order to handle all kinds of situations and events that occur.
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.
In the Prep/1 classroom we have been talking about actions we can take when we feel certain things.
You can encourage us to ask questions to feel better about the things that worry us.
Year 2/ 3
In the Year 2/3 classroom we are learning about how we are connected to Australia and the world and similarities and differences of familiar places. Have a discussion with your child about these places.
Year 3/ 4
In the Year 3/4 classroom we have been learning about the Map of Australia. We have looked at Indigenous history and how maps used to be called ‘Songlines’. Ask us what Songlines means and we can tell you about a Dreaming Story we have learned about!
Year 5/ 6
In the Year 5/6 classroom we have been looking at different transformations (translations, rotations and reflections) and how they can be applied to shapes. We made some posters showing how we transformed the letters in our name. Ask us to show you at home!
