I’m writing this in the closing hour on the eve of a new journey. Tomorrow, today by the time this piece is posted, is the first day of class…Biblical Greek. Welcome to seminary. Let’s start by learning a new, but ancient, language and grammar that really was glossed over all those years ago in primary and secondary school. And let’s do this in a 2-week intensive format. Yep, that’s what I signed up for. Crazy is probably what you are thinking. And why? On some level you are likely correct. But there it is.
It’s exciting…and terrifying (also echoed by several classmates). And yet, the nerves have calmed down. A sense of being in the right place has settled in. And forward is the way to go. But don’t ask me what the destination is, for I don’t know. I don’t need to know at this point. What was that reading from Sunday morning about faith?
Heb. 11:1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. (NRSV)
Or maybe this version…
Heb. 11:1 Faith is the reality of what we hope for, the proof of what we don’t see. (CEB)
Faith, trust, seems to go hand in hand with a quote from a poet a friend introduce me to and which keeps circling in my head. It sounds a bit puzzling when you first read it…
I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.
Rilke
Trust that the answers to the questions will come in due time. Have confidence that things are aligned. Know when it is well with your soul. So that end goal of embarking on a seminary degree? I don’t know and I am less and less bothered by not being able to answer that. The answer, the ministry, will find me at some point on this journey and maybe not until the very end. That’s okay. In the meantime, I’m trusting, I have faith, that this is where I’m supposed to be today, the journey I’m meant to embark on. I’ve been living some why questions and now add some what questions, letting the answers unfold and reveal themselves.
If nothing else, my soul and my spirit know it deeply, and to be true, that it is good, very good, to be here.
P.S….Did I mention there’s also software we need to learn how to use in these 2 weeks? It does some pretty cool things.
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