Faith’s Curriculum: How “Tiny Miracles” Shape a Bolder Vision for Learning (and Living)

Dear Friends,

Over the last several weeks, you’ve journeyed with me as we’ve picked at the cracked foundation of American education.

We’ve questioned not just our pedagogy and policies, but our deepest orientation toward meaning.

I’ve argued, gently but persistently, that the mending our schools need cannot come from newer methods or shinier technologies alone, but from a reinvigorated, mature faith—an orientation that holds both the mind’s rigor and the soul’s hope.

This week, I am pulled back to the heart of that posture—not by a theory, not by a curriculum template, but by a living testimony: the story of our recent guest on “Created in the Image of God,” Jennifer Hendricks-Fogg.

If faith is the substance of things hoped for, as the ancient letter to the Hebrews claims, then Jennifer’s life is the substance—given flesh—of that hope. Her son’s name is Logan; her own middle name, as divine serendipity would have it, is Faith. The world, it seems, is once again offering us a curriculum not written on chalkboards or tested in exams, but lived in the shadowlands between fear and surrender, diagnosis and defiant love.

What Is Faith? (Hint: It’s More Than Wishing and Waiting)

“Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” (Hebrews 11:1)

Let’s begin where real education must begin: by defining our terms honestly.

Faith is one of those words that is both everywhere and nowhere in our culture. Too often, it’s mistaken for mere optimism, or for a kind of wishful thinking, well-meaning but untethered to action or evidence. But Hebrews goes further. Faith, it tells us, is not simply a comfort in uncertainty but the backbone of our deepest convictions—a confidence that animates, that acts, that persists when “what is seen was not made out of what was visible.” (Hebrews 11:3)

It is not denial of reality, but the force that dares to seek meaning within it. It is, in Jennifer’s story, the stubborn “NO” to impossibility itself—the refusal to surrender her son Logan to a medical narrative that wrote him off before his first birthday. And in so doing, it’s become a generative force—a wellspring not just for her family, but for dozens of others who have found hope and help through the Logan Strong Foundation.

The divine confirmation of Jennifer’s middle name does not escape me. In her journey we see the true curriculum that the “school of life” offers: not rote memorization, not fallback dogma, but the slow maturing of faith through resistance, heartbreak, and, yes, tiny miracles.

The World as Divine Curriculum: What Are We Here to Learn?

My trilogy of books—The People of the Sign, The Hardness of the Heart, and The Rod of Iron—is, in a sense, just a stammering attempt to map the unfolding of this curriculum.

Years ago, as I struggled with WCG doctrines and their aftermath, or as I slogged through illness, institutional collapse, or the biting failures of my earlier years, I returned again and again to the notion that reality itself is a classroom, The School of Hard Knocks—unfolding lesson by lesson, heartbreak by heartbreak.

We, if we are honest, are pupils here.

The material world, with all its mystery and occasional cruelty, is not simply dead matter—it is a living syllabus, authored by the same One who gave us Scripture.

The “Divine Curriculum” is not only God’s revealed Word, but the lived world itself—the created field into which we are thrown, called, and sometimes left bewildered. Because in The School of Hard Knocks, with faith as our teacher, the tests come first and the lessons follow.

I have learned, as have so many of you, that the ability to learn from this divine curriculum requires something more than intellect, more than method. It requires what Jennifer so exemplifies: the capacity to incline, deliberately, even when the way is shrouded in fog.

If we are “created in the image of God,” as the Bible affirms, then the act of faith is simply the act of living out our birthright—the child learning to walk, despite the bruises; the seeker rising from setbacks; the parent loving in defiance of statistics. To incline toward God, to remain oriented to meaning, is itself the truest education.

Jennifer’s Testimony: Faith with Flesh and Bones

Jennifer’s story is, at first glance, a medical drama: a woman, “geriatric” by obstetrics, handed a diagnosis no mother desires for her infant son.

“He will not survive,” she was told, and then, “He will not walk, not talk, not eat.” But the story is not, at root, about defying doctors. It is about a soul learning faith as a muscle, not a mantra—a faculty as real as sight or speech.

Listen to the contours of her journey, as she describes clinging to hope in sterile hospital rooms, “no handbook included,” trusting in the convergence of prayers pouring in from around the world. There is nothing passive here. Faith did not mean ignoring the valley of the shadow but stepping into it—armed not with certainty, but with trust that the Author of the curriculum had not deserted His own story.

Her response has been utterly countercultural. Where many turn to anger or blame, she reorients toward gratitude, and then toward giving—first to her child, then to her community. The Logan Strong Foundation’s practical acts (charging stations in hospitals, comfort gifts, meals for families) are not just “do-gooding,” but incarnate recognitions of how God’s curriculum asks us to act, to intercede, to make visible the hope we cling to.

It is, in short, faith as assurance. Faith as a verb.

The Education We Need: Faith is the Engine of Transformation

If my years studying both scripture and science have taught me anything, it’s this: the real crisis in education—indeed, in all our social systems—is a crisis of faith, rightly understood. Not of religious affiliation, but of the orienting confidence that our choices matter, our sacrifices are not wasted, and the universe—contra the materialist myth—is not random, but responsive.

Jennifer did not wait for systems to change before she acted. She did not outsource responsibility, nor did she imagine that institutions alone could deliver the meaning she sought. Instead, she claimed her own agency within the curriculum handed to her—a curriculum that included suffering yes, but also the possibility of redemption.

This is the education we need: not a nation of consumers waiting for better systems, but a movement of apprentices and creative co-authors—each learning, failing, and loving as participants in the ongoing lesson God is giving. Without this, all reform is patchwork; with it, every system is given a pulse.

My Story, Our Story: Faith as the Path through Unknowing

I recognize myself in Jennifer’s narrative. Many times in my own journey—be it the long, confused wilderness of my years after the collapse of WCG, the chronic pain that bent me (but did not break me), or the agony of watching ideals crumble in marriage or vocation—I have been forced to come to terms with a faith that is neither cheap nor cheerfully blind.

I think, in particular, of my transition from being an ordained minister of a defunct theology to becoming a corporate technology consultant. And the moment I knelt under a desk at CB Richard Ellis, battered by self-doubt and deadlines, and offered up a prayer not for success, but for the will to abandon the outcome: “Nevertheless, thy will be done.”

It is a refrain familiar to every serious seeker—the surrender Jesus modeled in Gethsemane, the same thread that runs through Jennifer’s account of miscarriage, waiting, and finally, acceptance.

What I have learned is that faith matures precisely through surrender, not control. We plead for outcomes; God offers education. Every “tiny miracle” is, in fact, an invitation to a still deeper lessons: to count the cost, to accept the cup, to incline toward the curriculum with humility.

Synthesis: Mature Faith as the Blueprint for Renewal

This, friends, is why I contend that the ultimate solution for education—and, by extension, for society—is not the technical fix but the renewal of faith.

Mature faith—that which receives hardship as lesson, not punishment; that which measures success by love offered, not plans fulfilled—is the true engine of transformation.

No theory or institute—not even the best-inspired models for Hillcrest Orchard or Royal Falcon Foundation—can replace the work of the heart in opening, choosing, and persisting in the way of God’s curriculum.

Jennifer’s story, like mine, is just one tile in a living mosaic. Our array of backgrounds, institutions, and ideologies may differ, but the divine invitation is the same for all: to act with faith, to love with abandon, to accept the call to both receive and give away whatever “piece” we are handed.

A Living Invitation: Will You Bring Your “Piece” to the Curriculum?

So—if you’ve read this far, consider what Jennifer, Logan, and every tested soul are asking you to reconsider: Will you be a faithful steward of the curriculum you are living, or a passive onlooker? Are you waiting for systems to shift so you can thrive, or will you thrive in place, turning adversity into gift, and limitation into creative response?

The real “common core” God seeks is one that roots knowledge in hope, intellect in trust, service in faith. Jennifer’s journey is not exceptional; it is exemplary. Let her testimony embolden you to act, wherever you are, with whatever “piece” the Divine Potter has placed in your hand.

To paraphrase ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá: “Where there is love, nothing is too much trouble, and there is always time.”

The curriculum is not finished.

The greatest lesson may yet be the one you choose to write with your life.

Incline now—above all else—not to resignation, but to that older, harder, and more beautiful form of faith:

The faith that sees “tiny miracles” not as the exception, but as the pattern—the ongoing signature of a God ever at work, ever calling us to learn, to serve, and to love beyond our measure.

Let us not only study this curriculum—let us, by faith, choose to embody it.

In gratitude hope, and faith.

—Wade Fransson

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