They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendour.
Isaiah 61: 6
When we renamed our reception class last year, ‘Acorns’, there was an intended resonance with our school symbol of an oak tree. The process of education is drawing out the oak inside the acorn so that it is strong and endures. And the process of Christian education is to plant an oak in soil which is rich in life and truth, so that the oak which grows is sustained and shaped by those roots of life and truth. The verse from Isaiah above is one which I think about a lot as I reflect on our vision as a school.
In Friday’s assembly we considered three features about the ‘oak of righteousness’ which Isaiah speaks about. It’s an oak of righteousness. It’s not weakened by rot but whole and secure. For the Christian this wholeness and strength comes not from within but from Christ, the one who alone is perfect and secure. Our desire at Emmanuel is that each child has a confident trust that Christ is the secure foundation on which their lives can be built.
We learnt last week that in the forest, out of one million acorns that an oak generates, only one becomes a mature oak. Over half term we went to Runnymede and we saw some oaks which had matured because they had not been planted randomly but placed by Queen Elizabeth II. They were sturdy and strong and producing a good crop. In this school, our children, or ‘acorns’ are not randomly here, they are placed by God. It’s our constant prayer that God would bring the right people at the right time to our school. No-one is here by accident. And for each child, God has a unique purpose, not to be like anyone else, but to become what God has made them to be.
In Friday Afternoon Fun we’ve been learning about bark. It’s amazingly beautiful but the interesting thing is that every oak tree has a different type of bark, depending on the conditions it has been exposed to. We can learn about the climate from years ago from the bark of trees. And the vitality of the tree’s canopy and the quantity and health of acorns which fall from it also tell a story. So too do our lives: as we depend on God’s faithful love, we tell the story of God’s constant faithful love to his people, even, or especially, through adversity.
The end of our topic ‘Detectives for Beauty’ is not the end of discovering beauty. I hope you continue to find beauty in unexpected places and that the oak trees we’ve enjoyed studying remind you of the bigger story we are invited to be part of.
