All Things Belong to God

So today was my first day back at school and I've had a LOT to chew on in the past few hours.

I started New Testament with Dr. Susan Eastman today. I remember really enjoying her comments and thoughts when she spoke during Orientation and I feel that I'll continue to enjoy her. She said some really fascinating things about Scripture today. We don't exactly read Scripture well in our society today. Scripture is taking in Jesus--God's Word. And it is supposed to mess us up. If we find ourself flailing when it and our questions about it knock us off balance, we're supposed to dive right in, nose first...falling into Jesus. She argued that it is important to use a combination of techniques to really dive into Scripture well. Some of these require using the skills of a scholar, and others just fully rely on God. The prescense of the Holy Spirit and the "economy of grace" is absolutely essential to our reading. Some people only have these graciously given tools, yet others of us are privileged enough to have other tools to help us give a fuller picture of God. But without these two fundamentals, there cannot be a good biblical interpretation. Scripture, history, wisdom, people--they all belong to God.

During Old Testament, we read through 1 and 2 Kings. God is a Living God. This means that God is free to do what God wants to do. God uses prophets as messengers of what He wants to communicate, and isn't exactly a position of envy. So often we want to follow this prophetic tradition that we see in the Bible: We want to call out injustice or we have "prophetic ministries." We have to be really careful with this as clearly the Biblical tradition reveals that this is a short-lived existence, free to be moved and removed by God, often suffering and a suffering witness unto death. The life of the prophets is clearly about God.

We had a workshop today and over and over I became aware of how much needs to change within me, especially when it comes to time management. I became aware that the issue of handling life, especially life in Div School, is about calling, stewardship and spiritual discipline. All time (and all things) belong to God. This should change how I do things. Do I take time out to care for others? Do I take time to let God take care of me? How do I wisely navigate my time to better steward my time to study? Where am I being idolatrous? At what point do other things dictate my schedule other than God?