Living Incarnationally at GCCA
This is the time of year when we as Christians celebrate the amazing fact that Jesus truly is our Immanuel, our “God with us.” In this season of Advent, we aim to look past the commercialization of Christmas and focus instead on the reason we celebrate: Jesus left His heavenly throne and willingly entered into our earthly mess (even, quite literally, being “born in a barn,” of all places!), took on human flesh, lived the perfect life we could never live, and died the death we should’ve died. Christ did all this not only for the Father’s glory, but so that we could receive the greatest gift ever: life eternal with Him. As we remember this great truth, our finite minds are once again stunned with the knowledge that our Heavenly Father would choose to send His Great Son, the Supreme Creator Over All (Col. 1:16-17), on a rescue mission to our broken world.
This is the Gospel message that we at GCCA desire to impress upon our students’ hearts, not only at Christmas, but all school year long. Seeking to have this great truth as the framework for all our actions, we strive to create a school culture of “living incarnationally.” Just as Paul exhorted the early church in Philippians 2:3-4, we also aim to encourage our students to “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.”
How does this call to live incarnationally in Christlike humility manifest itself here at GCCA? If you were to walk down the halls of GCCA on any given day…
You would repeatedly see our young men and boys rushing to hold the door open for their fellow students, as their grateful classmates acknowledge that act of simple service with a heartfelt “thank you!”
You would see students helping out whenever they see a need, like picking up a piece of trash on the playground, walking each other to the nurse’s station for a Band-aid, or bringing other students’ things to them whenever they are lost.
You would see students tearfully empathizing with their classmates whenever they’re sad, comforting them when they’re hurting, and being quick to offer prayer for those in need.
You would see students serving one another in little ways, like cleaning up after each other when they’re done with a craft, offering aid to those who are not quite finished, or giving up their own time to help those students who have been absent to catch up on schoolwork.
You would see students unhesitatingly welcoming visitors to our school, greeting them with smiling faces and quickly considering what their needs might be. One small boy even counted out his gummy bear snacks to ensure a guest didn’t go hungry! Another young student meekly stopped classroom instruction because he was deeply concerned that one of our visitors did not have a chair to sit on, so he raised his hand to ask if he could go get her one.
These are just a few of the many examples of God at work in the hearts of our students this Advent season. We praise Him that, because His matchless Son chose to dwell with us by humbling Himself “to the point of death, even death on a cross,” we can see glimpses of His grace in little and big ways throughout our school days. We look forward to that day when we will see the full spectrum of His grace when He comes again (Phil. 2:8)! Until that time, may He continue to enable us to live incarnationally within the walls of GCCA and beyond, to the praise of His glorious grace!
By Mrs. Ashley Keith
Office & Communications Coordinator
“Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.”
– Philippians 2:3-11