A new blog entry. wow.

I simply do not understand where the time goes. Becca and I have been here 3 months now, I've been in seminary for 2, and it feels like we just moved in. I keep meaning to blog regularly but I obviously am not keeping things up to date very well. Seriously, if I haven't updated in a week or so complain and I'll try and at least write something. Here's a poem/song I wrote for my Living in God's Presence class a few weeks back...we had to write a poem based on a psalm. It didn't have to be good. :)

The light in Your eyes,
The smile on Your face,
The laughter I hear in Your voice,
Lord, how could I help
But to shout out Your praise,
To rejoice in the Source of all joy?

You will make known to me the path of life, the path of life,
And in Your presence is fullness of joy;
In Your right hand there are pleasures, Lord, forevermore,
For in Your presence is fullness of joy…

Now rejoicing with You,
As You rejoice over me,
Lord, how could I ever have known,
That You are the One,
Who, when Your lost ones are found,
Exults while Your angels look on?

How could I help but smile when I see Your face,
when I see Your face?
How could I help but laugh when I hear Your voice,
when I hear Your voice?
How could I help but dance and lift up my hands,
and lift up my hands?
When You rejoice over me with such joy?

I am really no good at this blogging thing, am I?

I keep intending to blog, but there just aren't enough hours in the day it seems. I have a bunch of "comp time" this week since I'm a non-exempt employee, so I'm not supposed to work more than 40 hours a week and with the College Conference and some church displays I was at i had more like 60 last week, so I have to take time off this week. But there's so much to do! It's nice to be home right now though. I worked a full day yesterday and only like 5 hours today. I had a couple of students come in for tours, talked to a bunch more on the phone, and Herr Bockelman brought in enough Polish Sausage & Suarkraut to feed the entire office in celebration of it being Oktoberfest. Even though it's 90+ and doesn't feel like October at all.

Let's see...the College Conference--this was totally awesome. We had about 200 students from who knows how many campus ministries at this thing, from all over AZ and even a delegation from California. And it wasn't even weird, everyone was worshipping and learning and fellowshipping together even across ministry lines. The workshops were awesome, the worship was awesome, it was just very cool. It was a lot of work, but Becca and I still got to go to some of the workshops. And just having so many people volunteer their time and skills for this was a blessing. But man, if I thought it was a lot of work preparing for a men's weekend or something like that in 5.19, this was just wayyy more complicated. But definately worth it.

Other than that, I need to move my stuff from my cubicle into my new office, that's really exciting to me to be honest. It is hard with Jeff leaving, he was the Director of Enrollment and I kinda feel this overload of information as he was teaching me in many ways how to do my job and his job. Derek is starting as an enrollment counselor next week, and that means I'm going to be training him, but really it's not like I've been there all that long either. But I am shocked at how much I have picked up and how quickly. I really love working at the seminary, it's like the best of all the experiences I've had rolled into one job/ministry. But I really miss Ohio, and I really miss all of you, and the saddest part of being so happy with my work and school experience here is that I don't get to share the joy of that with you all on a daily basis.

In about an hour and a half I need to leave for my interpretation class. For tonight I had to make a chart on Acts 4:1-6:7, I have no idea if it's done correctly or not since it seems more like a timeline to me than a chart, but who knows. Last week we had this observation assignment on the Gospel of John that the syllabus said would take an hour and a half and should be done in one sitting, it ended up taking more like 7 hours, but that was good. I must say, I am glad the assignment for tonight didn't take another 7 hours otherwise I would most definately not be blogging right now.

I guess that's all for now. Anyone who hasn't heard Mike's new songs should email him and ask for the links, he just sent them to me and they are AWESOME.

A couple of new traditions...

Well, I went to the first meeting of our Greek Club at the seminary this morning, we're meeting every wednesday from 7:30-8:45 to work our way through the greek text of Mark (cause it's the simplest greek in the bible) and it was awesome. Brian, you'd love this, I wish we'd started something like this in BG. You should commute out for wednesday mornings, then back each week to BG. Anyways, we only got through like 13 verses, but it was great going through so slowly and just really digging into it together, there was maybe 8 or 10 of us there, so it's not a threatening environment to make mistakes, introduce heretical translations, etc.,..

In other news, starting the friday after this one, all fridays will be renamed Battlestar Galactica Fridays, as my friend John got a copy of the series on DVD and we're going to watch an episode on our lunch break every friday. Fridays a lot more laid back at the seminary, though honestly it's pretty laid back all the time.

Anyways, that's enough for now, because i'm tired.

Interpretation

I've been working on some reading for my classes today (though not as much as I should have been, I must admit the three day weekend has lessened my motivation for working ahead). I must be a super-geek because I am about to highly recommend a couple of textbooks to you all, how can I be excited about textbooks? I don't know but I am. The first is called Historical Theology: An Introduction to the History of Christian Thought, which I found utterly fascinating. I don't know what else to say other than that I wish I'd read it years ago. It's so weird that the same things and questions we delve into today have been delved into before, and often other believers have found some decent answers. The church has already faced some serious challenges, and sometimes it's failed in the face of them. I think maybe we can do better if we at least see some of the mistakes that have occured in the past.

The other book is Introduction to Bilblical Interpretation, I know this probably sounds boring but seriously it's not at all so far. A lot of the questions I think we began to examine in our Bible study last spring and summer are addressed to some degree in this book, and I'm still reading it so I'll have more to write on it soon. Some of those questions of 'Why can't (or why doesn't) the Holy Spirit just illuminate every believer so that we understand Scripture in the same way, i.e., the way it was meant to be understood?' or just the general frustration that studying some passages can lead to, when it doesn't seem at all like God's word is clear or that we have all we need to understand it adequately, even though we know He's not trying to trick us or make things harder than they need to be. Anyways, I'm including a couple of quotes from this latter book, and will probably try and do this on occasion with things I'm learning in and out of class, just to share stuff that I find interesting/inspiring/disturbing/whatevering.

“Any type of oral or written communication involves three expressions of meaning:
(1) what the speaker or writer meant by what he or she said;
(2) what the recipient actually understood by the statement; and
(3) in some abstract sense, what meaning is actually encodes in the text or utterance itself.”

"To grasp the text fully—and, more important, to be grasped by it fully—means to enjoy the ‘pleasure of the text,’ to engage it joyfully and adventurously with our mind, emotions, and imagination.”

“When we simply allow our unchallenged feelings and observations to distort or determine what the Bible means, our experiences have become the measure for what a text can mean. We must adopt an approach to interpretation that confronts this danger, for Scripture alone constitutes the standard of truth for Christians, and we must judge our values and experiences based on its precepts, not vice-versa. It follows, then, that any valid approach to interpretation must concern itself with two crucial dimensions:
(1) an appropriate methodology for deciphering what the text is about, and
(2) a means of assessing and accounting for the readers’ present situation as we engage in the interpretive process. We must account for both ancient and modern dimensions.”

I guess I'm certainly interested in this last part as some of you probably know my frustration when I see what is written and can't line it up with what is. Anyways, I ought to get back to studying, but figured I should continue trying to blog on a semi-regular basis.

Just a quick blog...

to say that my classes are awesome! Work is going really well too, but it's nice to have a night where I didn't head right from work to class. Tuesday is the roughest--but hey, Joel's been working 90 hours a week and taking classes for all this time, so I suppose I can survive without complaining too much.

In other news, Becca and I went to IHOP Sunday and saw Ricky Schroeder eating breakfast there, I guess he comes in every friday and sunday. Mr. T apparently eats at the Denny's--I guess they had some sort of falling out after the whole Silver Spoons ordeal, and that's why they now frequent different breakfast places. It's a fascinating place, this city of Scottsdale.

That's about it, but let me leave you with this: "In the Kingdom of the Noun and the Verb, all other parts of speech are but vassals."