Ad Lucem: A Journal of K-12 Christian Scholarship

What We Don’t See   By Jared Baldwin “He’s doing it again.” “Well then stop him!”  “How?”  “Simple. He has homework and he should be doing that.”  Jack sat in his room staring at a wall, but not giving any thought about the wall. His spatial awareness was unusually low, almost as if he wasn’t there; and, in truth, it was almost as if he wasn’t. He had heard earlier that day that someone in his school had passed away. He wasn’t that close to the kid. He had seen him once or twice in the hallway, maybe talked a time or two, but he had never gotten to know him personally. However one thing he and everyone else knew about Sam was that he was a Christian. Jack had never judged him for it, but could never understand why he chose to believe he had no control over his own fate. At least, that’s what everyone said, that Sam thought there was a God in control of everything. Jack paused in his trail of thought to look around his room. He noticed his backpack sitting on his b

I never fully realized how much this school has had an impact on my life until I went through a difficult family situation in seventh grade. My parents were getting a divorce at the time, and my grades started slowly dropping, especially in math. I didn’t feel like trying at something I couldn’t understand anymore. When I got home one night, my mom told me that my math teacher had stopped in her classroom after school to tell her that he understood what I was going through as he had once faced a similar circumstance. He offered to pray for me right then and said he was going to look out for me. After hearing this, I remember feeling a great amount of relief, gratitude, and encouragement. It was comforting to know that I wasn’t alone and that it didn’t appear I just wasn’t smart enough to complete the assignments. Throughout the year, he continued to check up and me and occasionally sent me emails, making sure I was keeping up with the material and presenting help when needed.

Community is a gift. We are so grateful for the teachers and students who have impacted our children for the last four years. Are they perfect people? No. I think all of them pictured here would laugh if I said that they were perfect. These intelligent, creative, self-sacrificing, unique, fun-loving, adventurous, wonderful people are the community of Christian Central Academy . God brought us here together that we, with our children, might grow in "wisdom, and stature, and favor with God and man" (Luke 2:52). Perfection was never our intention when we chose Christian Central Academy for our children's education. Christian community was the hope and the reason that we made drastic changes in our two children's educational trajectory. We longed for God's direction, and with one verse, that led our way from cradle until 2015, we followed Him to this people, this place. From the time our children were born, my husband prayed Luke 2:52 by their bedside. He praye