Liberty Christian School Blog

       I sat parked in my car near the lake, watching the water while trying to shut down thoughts about the “problem of the day.” I didn’t want anything or any power to distract me from missing what God had for me in the present moment. And then I saw him. At first there were two and I had been watching them play without REALLY noticing them, without REALLY seeing them. He was just a little squirrel, plump and playful, in the leaves. Squirrels love to find treasures. They will work very hard to reach their treasure only to bury it and forget it. Yet God cares for that forgetful little creature.

       How squirrel- like I can be at times? I run in five different directions trying to store up all that I think my children will need... only to bury it. We buy that game, but we bury it because we don’t have time to play it. 

We see our child’s talent, but we bury it because we don’t know how to support it. We give our children all the right tools, but they too end up buried. Simply because we don’t know how to teach our kids how to build the Godly character they will need to use those tools, without the support of a community. We work hard to get all the right material items and sign up for all the right activities. Still we aren’t perfect parents and we don’t always feel like we have the time or support needed to do all of the things we think our children need, and we bury it. I thought about how God cared for that little squirrel and Matthew 6 came to me:

 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” 

Suddenly I could hear the birds chirping and I felt embraced by God’s promises.  Why then do I worry about storing up riches? Why do I squirm around like a squirrel burying treasures for my children that we will soon forget?  I don’t know about you, but I don’t want my children’s inheritance in my squirrel-like hands. No much better that they, like their inheritance, are in God’s hands. Of course I want to give my children good gifts, but I don’t need to worry about what they will lack or who they will lean on. I don’t have to worry about them having the best clothes or a trust fund to draw from. The Lord goes with them. He will provide for them. I’m grateful that God sees my squirrel-like hands and looks on them with love. He takes them in His powerful hands and whispers “You can trust me to take care of your children, for I made them and loved them before they were born.”

      Through faith in the hands of God, I can give my children the gift of learning to trust Him. Learning To Lean on Him.  So, I can loosen my squirrel-like grip on the buried treasures of  the top ten summer camp sign ups, posh playdates, and world class vacations. 

 I can shift my gaze to the One who made my children and thank Him for teaching them His word through their Christian  education. I can store up the treasures of hearing my children speak about the Lord’s plan for their life with confidence. I can store up the treasures of hearing my children pray through their problems and love others like Jesus. These treasures are stored in the eternal home of my children’s hearts. And that heavenly treasure won’t be lost among the squirrel treasures here on earth. Every moment of time I invest in pointing my children toward Jesus is stored up, and I am so glad I don’t have to do it on my own. The Lord works through his people in the Christian community and Christian education to help me when my squirrely hands need a helping hand. 

Greetings from Liberty Christian School in the year 2017.  In 2017, there was no robotics program and nobody knew if one even existed.   There were Legos, computers, Knex, and Erector sets.

Then one day, a parent began to explore the options for students to learn more about STEM.  In the late summer of 2017 robotics became a reality for five students, four boys and one girl.  That’s me, Hannah. 

I was the only girl on the team. This  had its advantages and disadvantages. The boys mostly asked me to get things for them or to clean up stuff.  The boys really didn’t think much about me being there and often did their own thing until one day the coach asked the boys to do some documentation in the engineering notebook.

One of the boys responded with the comment,  “Can’t Hannah do that?”. Well... let me just say that never happened again.  My coach quickly stepped up to my defense and told the boys that I was not their secretary.  The whole dynamic of our team changed that day. I became one of the main coders last year and therefore did not do much building or driving.  We ended up having a very successful year with a great STEM project and went to the VEXIQ World Tournament.

That was such an amazing experience.  I listened to so many motivational speakers who wanted to encourage the next generation of young kids to reach for the stars.  One person in particular that stands out in my mind is Ayah Bdeir. We have chosen her as our STEM role model because she was brave and found a way to make her dreams come true.

She is a female that had a dream and didn’t let anyone stop her.  I am sure that her girl power found it necessary to include men in the making of her Little Bits along the way but she did not let them take over her project.   She had a desire for electronics to reach the hands of all children, male and female. She did so with the invention of Little Bits. They are like an electronic version of Legos.  They are so cool! She had done it, she stepped into a world where men mainly dominated and made herself known.

At the VEX IQ World Tournament she stood before me receiving the 2018 STEM
HERO award and was inducted into the REC Foundation Hall of Fame for her personal and professional contributions to young people.  Ayah said that the power of “electronics should be in everyone’s hands so that anyone can build, pro-type, and invent”. In 2014, Popular Mechanics recognized her as one of 25 makers who are reinventing the American dream for her creation of Little Bits.  Little Bits were created so that at the simplest level children and adults can play with lights, sounds, and sensors without any previous experience. How cool is that? I was so inspired by her that I couldn’t wait to get back to school to tell all my friends about it!   From that day forward everyone wanted to join the robotics team.

 Hi, my name is Elizabeth.  

Let’s jump forward to the summer of 2018.  I am one of the girls that was touched by Hannah’s enthusiasm of robotics and her trip to the World Tournament.  

This summer LCS began enrollment for its next robotics team. Three of their original teams members were not going to return in the fall.  After having the first year behind them the LCS robotics team was ready to recruit for year two. This year we have grown from one team to three teams.  Guess what the boy to girl ratio is this year?

I will give you a hint…. It is not 4:1.   It is 7:7! We are equal in number. When we use the term GIRL POWER we do not stress that we are better than the boys.  We just want to encourage other girls to take the step into the STEM environment and see the many fun opportunities that are there for them to try.

This picture shows the great support of our families.  Without them, none of this would be possible. They support us and our coaches.  They come to all of our tournaments and encourage us even when we don’t get a trophy.

We have as many girls interested as we do boys.  That is a great feeling to be in a group of equally diverse students.  Our coaches make sure that each of the students are equally challenged in all aspects of the program.  We all participate in brainstorming, building, coding, driving, and working in the engineering notebook.

We all take turns at doing everything so that we know all about our robot and how it was designed and built.  Some of us are stronger in certain areas than others, but we continue to encourage each other to learn and grow.  Our coaches make sure that there is never a job that is labeled as a boy/girl job and therefore we are all treated with equal challenges.  Our coaches really do rock ( by the way, we have two female coaches and one male coach)!

Now let’s travel to the state tournament and beyond… hopefully, the summer of 2019 will bring us even more excited participants and our teams will grow even more as more girls are empowered to step out and feel welcomed to join this crazy, fun, mind challenging, afterschool world known as robotics.  We are beginning to understand that it is about the journey and the things we learn and take with us along the way.

A child’s experiences in his or her early years form the building blocks of that child’s spiritual foundation.  Considering that, on average, children spend about 1200 hours in school each year, the people with whom your child interacts during this time frame will have a profound impact on your child’s spiritual development.  Here are three important roles a Christian school teacher can play in your child’s life.

Nurturer & Encourager

While a teacher can’t (and shouldn’t) replace the nuture a loving home provides, a good Christian teacher can be a great force for encouraging and motivating your child to do his or her best work.  And, in a Christian school environment, a Christian teacher can use scripture as well as pray for your child.  These are great tools for nurturing, encouragement, and spiritual guidance.

Christ-Centered Disciplinarian

Discipline is a necessary part of any school experience.  In a Christian school, however, the goals of discipline exceed the basic expectations of ensuring the safety of staff and students and creating an environment conducive to learning.  In this setting, a Christian school teacher can provide discipline according to Biblical standards and train students in righteousness and godliness, with the desired outcome being for the child to experience God’s forgiveness and to become a self-disciplined student, striving to do God’s will.

Christian Role Model

A good Christian teacher who shares your values can serve as a role model for your child and provide strong Christ-like examples for him or her.  In a Christian school setting, Christian teachers can openly teach the truths of Scripture as well as demonstrate and model Christian principles.  

Since your child will be spending an appreciable amount of time with them during the school year, prayerfully consider the type of adults that you want to play an active part in your child’s day and in his or her education.

“And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones who is my disciple, truly I tell you, that person will certainly not lose their reward.”   Matthew 10:42

On January 13, 2016, Liberty Christian School hosted the Helping Up Mission (HUM) choir.  The Helping Up Mission is a community of hope which offers a comprehensive recovery program for men in Baltimore, Maryland. Our 8th grade students spent the morning working with LCS kitchen manager Don Aker to prepare a lunch and decorate a seating area.  The HUM choir arrived at 11:00, and our 8th graders served them lunch.  

After lunch, the men visited the middle school Bible classroom for an interactive devotional on the suffering and death of Christ.  During that time, the men sang some songs of praise in the room.  

Later, as the choir set up for their performance in the church sanctuary, they joined together with some LCS 8th graders to sing some songs.  The climax of the day was a powerful performance consisting of music and testimony of the unbelievable power of God to save and transform lives.

What an amazing testimony the whole day turned out to be.  The HUM choir blessed our students and our students blessed the men.  Check out this letter from Mike Rallo, the Spiritual Life Director at HUM:

“I was ready to leave,” said Doug. “my recovery seemed stagnant…I was just going through the motions, wanting to get back to what I feel is normal.”

“Normal” for Doug for many years was being on the streets, strung out on drugs and alcohol. Five months ago, Doug came to the Helping Up Mission to “deal with the problem.”

Doug has been working on his problems, but like many, gets tired of the routine. The mission is a comprehensive one-year spiritual recovery program for men overcoming addiction and homelessness. Doug was doing well. Singing in the choir – enjoying his “recovery” but he needed a boost.

Then, several weeks ago, the choir went to Liberty Christian School in Owings Mills. The choir does many singing engagements, but this was the first time to go to a school.

“It was amazing,” Doug said. “I was feeling tired and just wanted to get done, then, we get there, and kids are serving us a great lunch. Then we go into a classroom (Bible teacher Gary Tibbels’ class) where we smell, taste and see the love of God. And by the time we sang, I was feeling it…feeling the care of the students. They wanted us there. They sang with us, and we all enjoyed…”

The scripture says to “consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds.” (Hebrews 10: 24)

Doug, and all that were at the chapel – in fact, the whole day – were stimulated -Stirred up -To love God, and love others.

“Then we get back, and a week letter, we see that the kids (8th graders from Liberty Christian School) wrote us thank you notes, “ continued Doug. “Thank you notes!! To me! I never thought anyone would be thankful for something I was a part of….reminds me that God uses people to move us toward Him. ”

Doug is still singing.

The 8th grade students also documented the day.  Check out their work.  The soundtrack is from the HUM choir performance.

Stay tuned to hear about more collaborative events between LCS and HUM!