What a day...
Last night, I had a great talk with my friend Richard, and after some homework time I nodded off to bed around 12... a reasonable hour for me lately. However, I couldn't completely sleep. You know how those nights go, where you are kind of asleep, but not really asleep, and so you close your eyes to induce the sleep, but instead you're like, fake sleeping... yeah, so last night was one of those nights. I didn't know how restless I really was, until my roommate said to me this afternoon that she could tell I was tossing and turning.
Like a complete dork, I forgot my 1st class today started at 8:30, not 8, so I rushed over there, to find that I didn't need to rush at all. I found a way to burn the 1/2 hour, and when class started, I knew it was gonna be one of those days... what I have come to know as 'a thinking day'. All throughout the day, I had moment after moment, topic after topic, thought after thought, until I felt so overloaded, I decided to just get in my pajamas and come here to the library (my obvious place of comfort) and try to pour some of it out.
There is an instructor here at Simpson whom I greatly admire, and I have the pleasure of having 2 classes this semester with her. She is actually one of the major reasons I chose Simpson -- I sat in on 2 of her classes while at Genesis Visitation Weekend last year. Today, in my first class with her, which is History of the Muslim-Christian Encounter, we basically talked about the state of Christian beliefs, viewpoints, doctrine and the early church at the time when the Islamic faith formed. I won't bore you with all of the specifics, but lets just say that I probably wouldn't be too impressed by Christianity either, had I been there. Also, its made me come to the conclusion that we should never combine church and state -- I am convinced that it will not make things easier, more peaceful, or draw more people to God; it would rather do the opposite.
Then after myfrist class...there was the painful experience. I don't really want to go into it, but I will say that it was the actions of a group of people that actually brought me to tears... in public... the kind of tears that are really lonely. I was gonna blog about it, but decided to wait until its something more productive then just hurt.
Anyways, In my 2nd class with Dr. Cindi Strong, I was acquainted with the formulation and the reality of world religions, on a grand scale; which makes sense, because thats my 'Religions of The World' class. There are quite a few epiphanies I had in this class, but I won't go into every one of them here.
There is one thing conjoining these two classes that I want to mention, because its impacted me since the beginning of the semester. Dr. Strong has a term she uses when speaking about a Christian's relationship with God that just hits me: organic relationship. Just think about your relationship with God, and with Jesus as something organic for a moment. I won't go into it, the definition of the word, the reasoning she's given for that terminology -- maybe another time -- but I want to pass this on for others to think about it, because it's changed the way I look at relationship with Him.
The other big point of my day was of course, my Spiritual Formation class. Today, we had someone give a very moving testimony.Usually, and I don't know why (my heart is stone?) people's testimonies don't move me very much. However, Diana Larkin's testimony just hit me in a lot of places, and her own brokenness in sharing probably impacted me the most. I mean, a lot of times, people think their testimonies have to be tied up in nice little packages with a 'and then Jesus saved me, The End' kind of mentality... that ultimately everything smoothed out because God is good, God is faithful, yada yada yada... maybe thats why testimonies dont move me -- the format is a format, the tone is 'woe is me--until God...' and somehow magically all the problems are resolved or happily on their way there... it's like watching a TV drama, where they always seem to catch the criminal or stop world destruction in 1 hour or less. I don't go for that... tell me something real, be human, don't act like the story is over. Your testimony doesn't end until you're dead -- and even then, it's unlikely you've really had everything figured out before it happens.
At any rate, this reflection of Diana's life testimony sort of revolved around her son's suicide a little over a year ago. Most likely, we have all heard people talk about surviving someone they love that's commited suicide, but Diana's story was just.... different. There was hope, but it wasn't like she tried to conjure it up for the sake of her audience; nor was she disillusioned about where she is in the grieving process. She didn't attempt to sensationalize God's role in everything, nor did she play Him down -- it was just the account of her story, with every joyful, painful, and comforting twist. Yes, it did make me cry a little bit.
Thats my last class, so I headed back to my room, changed into my pajamas, and started a relaxing time reading and blogging in the library... There are still SO many things in my head... but until next time! KT |
