Apologies for the late blog everyone! February was one heck of a month, with lots to learn from.
Currently I am writing this in the middle of meal prepping for my next busy week, which just goes to show how go go go fellows life can be. I’m trying to make a cajun style red beans and sausage over rice but its coming out a bit watery. I think I might add a little corn starch mixed in with some of the cooking liquid to help thicken everything up in a bit
As excited as I am for life to slow down a bit after graduating from fellows, I really will miss all of the special opportunities of the program. Just in the past month we had our longest retreat yet which was super insightful. The guys also attempted to go on a secret trip to florida over the course of the women’s retreat but were sadly caught. We also started two new class which I both love, World view and New Testament. I’ll now elaborate a bit on what I loved about each of these
First up was the Career Calling and Vocation retreat. We got to have a guest pastor named Cam (also known as King Cam) fly out to come teach us for a weekend about how the gospel impacts our lives at work. We talked about how almost all jobs are either “For the kingdom” or “Against the world”, and how our work can make earth a little bit more like heaven. We were warned of the burden of meaning making, and were reminded to rest in having everything we do not having to carry incredible significance. We talk about a theology of risk, and how christians should take risks in their careers because we believe God will protect us regardless of the outcome. The most insightful part of the retreat was when we all had 1 on 1 career counseling. I talked to Cam about my plan to pursue full time ministry a bit later in life than I initially expected and he agreed that was a good idea, which gave me a lot of assurance that I was hearing from the Lord accurately. He also warned not to make my non-religious 9-5 into a mission field too quickly, but instead build rapport from my good work ethic and gracious spirit.
Up next was the grand “secret trip”. After class on friday all of the guys hid our cars in a free parking lot, and hurried to the airport. We were on our way to Fort Lauderdale florida, and overall it was a blast. Watching gladiator and braveheart in the same weekend, meeting Josh’s friend, ordering late night pizza, and all of us getting horribly sunburnt on the beach were some of the highlights. It further helped the fellows guy community bond, and solidified my confidence that we will be friends for life. I have so much confidence that all of the fellows guys (and girls too!) are going to do lots of good for the world, and bring God glory in their post fellows lives. After we got back from the retreat the girls immediately pointed our Josh’s sunburn to which he doubled down on his now infamous alibi, “I was doing work in front of a window and it was sunny out”
Update: The corn starch slurry didn’t work and I’m going to add more
Lastly I want to talk about our two new classes. Talking about World-Views are my jam. Being a philosophy major, discussing how other religions differentiate from Christianity is one of my favorite subjects. Many religions have partial truths, that find their fullness in the gospel, and knowing those half truths helps christians to more effectively witness to those of other belief systems. As Charles Spurgeon famously said “Discernment is not simply being able to tell right from wrong, but being able to tell almost right from wrong”. One of the interesting things our professor Scott brought up was that according to deists, sin is only a matter of ignorance and not morality. Salvation then is not about being brought to life by the spirit, but by learning what is good and true purely by human reason. I’ve been thinking a lot about how our culture shares this view. Sometimes sin is thought of as simply a lack of self awareness. As new age and open spirituality become increasingly more popular the belief that salvation is found by enlightenment of hidden spiritual truths, rather than reptance goes with it. Some Christians already subscribe to this idea without realizing it by ignoring biblical passages about Gods justice, and focusing the doctrine of sanctification on human effort rather than God’s intervention. And these kinds of thoughts are why I commonly get distacted in class, as my mind wanders in a thousand directions thinking about the implaicatons of what we are discussing
Update: The corn starch slurry worked!. Now I’ll just have to adjust the salt levels and add some garnish and I’ll be done. Yay food!
New Testament has also gotten off to a strong start. I love how Ryan and Emily invite us to wrestle with the overalls themes of large sections of scripture rather than getting lost in the details of each story. Seeing the whole forest of God’s love instead of just the trees fills my heart with worship for a God who always fulfills his promises. You can tell that all of the fellows have been hungry for deeper biblical study as the year has gone on, rather than always jumping to application (as good as application is). Its cool how each fellows personality and unique story really come across in our discussions and highlight differnet aspects of the text I couldn’t see if it was just me reading
Anyway, sorry if that was too much! I’m off to go grab dinner with my prayer partner this week and then work on my resume so I can start applying for jobs soon. Prayers would be appreciated
-Elijah