Idle and Blessed

I've been thinking lately about what it is to be a student of religion. I know I'm just an undergrad, but I have a pretty heavy School of Religion course load this semester, and it has become quite a journey... Because focusing academically on my God, on His Word, and on our experiences of Him, is an intensely personal matter. In this way I think religion just might be the most difficult "subject" of study available. Your life is made and broken on these things. "Whatever comes to mind when we think about God is the most important thing about us...we tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God." - A.W. Tozer And what I talk about and listen to and come to rest on while navigating my education shapes my mental image of God. I realize how malleable I am. I think my professors realize it too, but they certainly aren't any more hesitant to introduce crazy ideas to me. Making me read Plato, Tillich, Heidegger, Feminist theologians,...

The fact that I am blogging two days in a row is an indication that I have been blessed with free time. A very rare thing, that's for sure! Classes are going exceptionally well this semester. I adore my three religion classes (and those gen-eds are just gen-eds...you know). But I was thinking today in Johannine Literature that it might not really matter to me if the prologue in John was pieced together by various editors. It might not make a difference in my mind who wrote the Johannine Epistles. Maybe I don't even care about applying literary and historical criticism to John. It occurred to me that I don't really want to know all these things. Two reasons. One, I want mystery. Don't we all? I want to know that God, the incomprehensible and "wholly other" YHWH is beyond me. I want to say to myself, "I will find out when I ask my Jesus in heaven." To come to terms with every Biblical or Theological issue would take a lot of mystery away for me. And t...

Hey there, blogging world. Yes, I am still alive, although nearly buried alive in this thing called "sophomore year." I'm not sure how it happened, but all of the sudden all my classes are upper-level, I have two jobs, and am trying to keep some semblance of a social life. I'm pretty sure I've never been this busy before. BUT God is still God, there is still hope, and I'm sure I'll find balance sooner or later. I've been thinking about my Russian family nearly nonstop lately. Ok, it's not really just "lately" because I've been thinking about them since I started to get to know them in June. But I guess there was a little bit of a distraction period when I first moved back to Belmont. Plus, there's only so much the average college kid wants to hear about my time in Russia, so I haven't been talking too much about it here. My roommate reached her threshold about Day 2. I've been internally processing a lot. The news I recei...