NOTE FROM A HEADMASTER

Christopher Stevens, Cornerstone Classical School, Salina, KS

Every year our kindergarten incubates chicken eggs. Each day they turn the lights out and hold a candle to the eggs to track and draw the development of the embryo. One day, as they huddled around the egg in the dark, they saw the heartbeat for the first time.

One of the students spontaneously responded by singing, “Praise God from whom all blessings flow.” The class joined in and they all sang the Doxology together as they watched the tiny heartbeat.

There are many true and good responses to seeing the heartbeat of a chicken inside an egg, but this response was the right and proper response above all the others. Needless to say, that was a sublime experience for those children. Reflecting on it reminds me of Jesus’ words about how our faith should be like that of a child. A secularist or even an “experienced” science teacher might want to immediately talk about the science, but those students knew exactly what needed to be said in that moment, and they had the language for it and the environment to allow it.