'Oly, 'Oly, 'Oly

What Is True, Good, and Beautiful

I have not posted much lately on this Substack because honestly, I struggled to address its original purpose: to explain differences I see in classical Christian education and American public education. That purpose alone was not working for me, and I realized that I do not want to post anything that is not true, good, or beautiful. God’s creation is all three, and I want my work to reflect His truth, goodness and beauty.

Thus, in my own mind, my purpose will be just that—to come as close as I can to writing about what is true, good, or beautiful. Which leads me to “‘Oly, ‘oly, ‘oly.”

My two granddaughters are with me every weekday at Providence School of Tifton. My oldest granddaughter, Addie, is a three-year-old little sponge in our junior kindergarten classroom. My youngest, Evie, is in the faculty daycare room. Both are learning so much about God the Father, Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit in addition to colors, letters, numbers, and sounds.

In the car this morning, after picking them up at their mom’s office, I had the radio off and there was no sound for a few miles. Then a little voice piped up from the backseat, “‘Oly, ‘oly, ‘oly!” It was not the three-year-old. It was Evie, who will be two next month. She was not yelling it—she was singing it so well that I immediately knew what the song was. Those are the only words to the song she can sing, but she sings them strongly and on key, and like most almost-two-year-olds, she sings them over and over and over.

Her voice was beautiful. Have you ever heard a young child, not quite two, sing about the Holy Trinity? I will tell you that it immediately took my imagination to a cold, pitch-dark night in the Middle East a couple of thousand years ago. Would the angels who appeared and spread across the horizon, lighting it as bright as day, have sounded any more beautiful when they sang, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty?” Would the shepherds who heard the angels sing have known immediately, just from those first three words, the impact that new baby would have on the world?

Evie and Addie are learning more than how to read and write in school. At Providence, they learn to sing songs of praise to God; they learn who He is, who Jesus is, and why he is Father, Son, and Spirit. They are learning Truth.

We live in a secular-humanist world that says truth is relative: “Holy, holy, holy / Though the darkness hide thee / Though the eye of sinful man thy glory may not see.” Where I work now, where my granddaughters are now, is a place of light in the darkness pointing children very clearly to the Truth.

I know many good, God-fearing men and women who are called to work in public education just as I was for a time. I wish they had the freedom to teach what we can teach at Providence School of Tifton so other children, like Evie, will know “Only thou art holy, / there is none beside thee / Perfect in pow’r, in love, and purity.”

“‘Oly, ‘oly, ‘oly” is true, good, and beautiful, Evie. Keep singing it over and over.