I stood at midfield, and I watched. It was the Monday after a week-long break, and the irresistible sunshine had drawn a crew of high school students outside to play the first after-school pickup game of the season. The sun ricocheted between the concrete walls that embrace our little football field (soccer for those of us who say it that way), and it was suddenly summer in February. And as I stood near center, I just couldn’t get over it: the last bell had rung and all these guys wanted to do was stick around.
Okay, so they weren’t begging for more timed essays and pop quizzes. They’d had their daily dose of academia. But to be honest, so had I, and that’s not the only thing school’s about – not at ICSV anyway.
What they wanted was a little more Hope.
That’s the undeniable work of the Spirit here. Maybe you’ve seen it blooming where you live too: people longing for connection find their place in communities of love, and they encounter Hope. They learn that they matter. That’s exactly what’s going on when two dozen high school kids rush the field instead of rushing home at the end of seven periods of lessons.
And even after spending over half of my life at this school, first as a student, then a teacher, and now a parent, I’m full of wide-eyed wonder at where Hope will show its face next.
You see, I started at ICSV back when it had a different name. Back when I met my first real friend. Back when I had a whole head of hair (but that’s another story).
Being a little kid, I didn’t recognize Hope at the time, but I know now how it holds itself, its posture and gestures, the way it twinkles in the eyes. I think I was kind of a volatile kid, timid and shy and brash and proud at all the wrong times. My friend was the oldest son of church leaders in Vienna, and I think we connected early in that (I am the oldest son of my parents, also church leaders). Other than that, we were totally different. Where I was timid, he was confident. Where I was proud, he was humble. He was (and still is) the epitome of patient consistency, as I witnessed time and time again. Like when our whole class misbehaved during one recess, drawing forth the wrath of our teacher, and I was bawling my eyes out because I knew we were going to get in trouble, and he told me it would be okay. And we did get in trouble. And it was okay. Or when I fell into a destructive pattern of bullying a few years later, and he refused to participate, and that alone pulled me back out of the pit. Or when I learned in middle school what it felt like to receive the overwhelming hospitality of his family when I visited him at home or at church. Or when I was sobbing again when I moved away from Vienna, and this time he cried with me, and this meant we were going to be friends for life.
Some of those moments might seem small on paper. Maybe at first glance. But a friend for life is no small thing, and our friendship, which has been a beacon of Hope in my life for two decades, was nourished by the community at ICSV.
I’ve seen those kinds of friendships take flight as a teacher here as well. This school is the kind of place that makes room for unlikely friendships and patient, affirming community. I see the twinkle of Hope when I watch interactions between the popular kids at ICSV and students here that would have been mercilessly mocked at my American high school. Now, I’m not saying everybody gets it right all the time. Not every day and not every moment. I am saying, though, that it’s awe-inspiring to sit with a student and listen to him share about the opportunities he’s had here to form friendships with kids he would have bullied in another context.
“But what’s different about ICSV?” I ask. “Why don’t you bully here?”
“Well, I’m different at ICSV,” he says. “I guess because teachers care about me. About us. And most of us care about each other. I guess that’s why.” That’s the face of Hope. And I saw it again, yesterday, on the football pitch as I stood at midfield with the sun dancing off the walls and watched my seven-year-old son play the game of his life with a bunch of teenage guys. Not because he was the best player on the field, but because he was the most vulnerable, and the high school students twice his age welcomed him in.
My favorite moment was when I turned and watched one of the guys make an offensive charge down the field at my son. And, yes, I was totally proud of my kid as he stepped to the ball. I was totally moved too when the teenager, a student of mine three times my son’s size and ten times his strength, faked an earth-shattering collision and crashed to the ground shouting, “You scared me!” I can still hear my son’s laughter.
That’s Hope. When you see it, you know it. It has the face of a lifetime friend, of a bully-turned confidant, of the strong welcoming the weak. It’s the moment someone learns that they matter.
It’s what happens when a community follows Jesus because He’s the face of Hope too. It’s what happens at ICSV.
Watch the full video below.