Wednesday 1 February 2012

Do your best. Give your best. See the best.

It’s a new month and a new semester and spiritual life director Mr. Gord Park started chapel this morning with a song “that’s never been sung before anywhere in the world!”

Based on Philippians 3: 13, 14, the words, sung as a canon, were: “Give no thought to what lies behind, but press on in the Lord.”


Mr. Park invited students to think about what a fresh start can mean, especially when it comes to evaluation, and how we evaluate ourselves.

He said students’ concern about marks can actually be based on worrying about how others see us or how we see ourselves. Whether our marks are high or low “we start to brand ourselves with that evaluation,” he said.

He said parents and teachers may encourage students to “do your best” but sometimes we think that doing our best merely means being better than someone else.


But “that becomes a comparison thing, a competitive thing,” said Mr. Park. Instead of looking at others, we should see ourselves as God sees us and we should not quit until we have nothing left.

Mr. Park shared a movie clip from “Facing the Giants” in which a blindfolded football player with a bad attitude accomplished more than he ever thought possible by listening to the voice of his coach.


“Don’t quit until you’ve got nothing left,” urged the coach over and over again. “Don’t quit. I want your very best.”

Mr. Park said the voice of the coach is the voice of the Holy Spirit in our lives, “encouraging you in school, in your relationships, in your work, in how you get along with your Mom and Dad, in how you handle yourself.”

If we are not listening to God’s voice we will be “looking at the wrong thing, at the wrong measuring stick,” said Mr. Park.

“Doing my best is allowing Christ to empower me to be the me he created me to be, for and to his glory,” Mr. Park said.


Mr. Park asked the students to spend this semester doing their best, giving their best, and seeing the best in others.

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: the old has gone, the new is here!” 2 Corinthians 5:17.

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