Once again the halls are bustling, students and teachers are excited, and it is hard to make your way through the halls. Valley Christian High School starts its 34th school year this year. God has truly blessed the school from its start at Bethany Community Church (now Sun Valley Tempe), its stint at the strip mall at Broadway and Price roads, as well as the rezoning and fundraising process for the current location. I believe the school has been obedient to God’s call and will continue to do so in the future.
Just recently the faculty participated in a devotional that focused on Joshua’s obedience to God in regards to conquering the City of Jericho. Jericho was considered an impenetrable city. It symbolized power and strength to the people that lived in the land. It was built on a hill. According to archaeologist, it had three layers of walls with guards on the top of the walls that could see for miles. The heights of some of the walls were 25 feet and 20 feet thick. As I am sure anyone of us would have done, Joshua was surveying the situation and trying to figure out how he ever was going to conquer it. I am sure a bunch of strategies or scenarios were going through his mind but none may have seemed sufficient.
Interesting enough, a figure (angel of high rank, or maybe the pre-incarnation of the Lord himself) appeared to Joshua. Joshua asked, “Are you for us or against us?” The answer was neither but, “I am the commander of the army of Yahweh.” I am sure this was a little confusing to Joshua since he thought he was. In fact, his name stated as much. Joshua was commanded to take off his shoes because he was on holy ground. He did so and fell down and worshiped.
Joshua was given instructions on what he and Israel where to do. They were to walk around the city on seven different days. On the first six days they were to march around once in silence. On the seventh day, they were to march around seven times. During the first six times they were to be silent, but on the seventh time around the rams horns (shofars) were to be blown and the people were to shout and give praise to God. If you know the story, at that time the walls came down.
The shofar primarily did two things: 1) alerted the people of Israel to battle 2) called the people to worship. You will notice that the people marched around the first six days of the week, but the seventh was the Sabbath. The shofar blew and the people worshiped. They took their eyes off of the insurmountable walls and put their eyes on the Lord. When they did this, the walls came down.
This symbolizes a lot of things in our own lives. However, in the realm of educating Christian young people – it also has a lot of significance. Being saturated every day of their lives with a secular world view that promotes spiritual suffocation and relative truth; stemming that tide can seem impossible. As an encouragement, our faculty was challenged to first seek God and He will help us in the task. He asks us to worship and obey and He will help us in the battles. As we have done throughout the school’s history, we will continue to do so this coming year and into the future.
Dan Kuiper
Administrator