why we're here

Wow! This year has simply flown past... and yet it feels like we've been here for a long time. My junior year of seminary is almost complete and it has just been such a wild ride. The pace is not always overwhelming, but days turn into weeks and weeks into months much faster than they did in my old life. I think it's because we're headed towards something definite, a visible endpoint. Seminary is 3 years and one of them is nearly done...

As students we've spent a lot of time standing on the shoulders of giants these past nine months, in every class, from Church History to New Testament studies. No matter where we turn intellectually, some genius has gone before us and shown the way. There are lots of deadends, ideas that just don't pan out theologically or pragmatically, but we have found that the exercise is almost always fruitful, if for no other reason than to discover what doesn't work.

What always works is faith. Every time I start to stumble or find myself laid out by some new twist or idea it is Jesus himself that brings me back from the edge. And it is always and only the real Jesus that does this, no pretender can do it. The real Jesus is the one I see in other Christians, sometimes they're leading me or maybe I'm leading them; often we're just moving down the same path together. In worship, in prayer, at lunch, in my kids, in the classroom, at Holy Eucharist... somewhere each week, I wish I could say every day, I encounter the Risen Lord in all his bright-shining-glory and it is more than enough, it's everything. Grades and other concerns are forgotten and I remember why we're really here; to worship and to love, that's it.