The Beginning of Again

This is home.

The smell of Arnold, the view from Mac's, the cafeteria toaster bursting into flames, the familiarity of my favorite department, the pre-chapel chatter, running into that certain Latimer door when the magnet doesn't release in time, the flash of a smile from a professor that makes my day, knowing that dinner isn't great when the sub line is long, the daily “Hello!!” from Trudy, late night dorm conversations, snow days on the threat of flurries, textbooks that I want to keep for life, the delight of actually getting something in the mail after struggling to turn the combination, being Facebook friends and fellow church members with my professors, Woodlee fire drills because everyone loves popcorn, Ben Norquist's beard, our quirky “triangle” that is more similar to a tetracontagon, and the love here that draws and cultivates my life into who I was meant to be.

Don't mistake me. It's not that every experience is rosy and nostalgic, but rather that each circumstance presses me further into the congruence of what I know and how I live.

My eyes shine to read our Statement of Faith, which affirms that God created us in His image as related in the book of Genesis. The glory of letting the very Word of God speak for itself is beautiful to me. This commitment is infinitely sweet, and it brings me to rejoice in the truth of God's divine and personal act of creating us with intrinsic worth and value. I delight in the truth that we are taught, and that Bryan is known for. Yet that truth does not remain static.

Bryan is also known for the love here – institutional congruence that what we believe about the origin and nature of man calls us to treat others with dignity, honesty, appreciation, and gentle concern for their well-being. Search the Bible and find that again and again, loving God cannot be separated from loving people. It is the great meta-theme of God's anger at Israel for oppressing the people even while they worshiped at the Temple, of fasting but not feeding the hungry, of upholding the Law but burdening the people, of providing unblemished lambs but at an exploitative price, of rushing to the synagogue right past the man beaten by robbers and lying in a ditch.

Let Bryan College be utterly devoted to the knowledge and love of God, and from that, just as devoted to being the hands and feet of God's love for his people. Care tenderly! Manifest grace! Speak with integrity! Provide for your neighbor, which includes those that are as different from us as the Samaritans were the Jews. May it be that the truth of the significance of man is supported and not undermined by the actions of Bryan College.

I long and pray for this college that I love so dearly to uphold all that which sums up the Law and the Prophets: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and love your neighbor as yourself.

Shema

"Shema, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one!"

I am currently taking a class on how to creatively teaching the Bible, and this is one of the questions, followed by my answers. Many thanks to Daniel Katz for his Hebrew scholarship and discussion.

Q: The Hebrew word shema means both “to hear” and “to obey.” How often does your hearing of Scripture lead to an obeying of it? Why is there often a gap between the two?

     It seems that the Hebrew connotates more than just “hear” (which is rather passive in our language) and “obey.” You could almost say that it means “heed.” On the human side, it was used to plead with God in prayer, in effect, “Hear my plea, answer me, deliver me!” It is not simply hearing, or even responding (which carries no determinate of responding negatively or positively). So if we are to shema the Word, we must take it as a call to heed Him and his commandments, and it is far more personal than obeying a set of rules. It is someone pleading with us to hear and obey Him because of his great love, calling for us to soften our hearts to his Word.

     I would say that occasionally during a corporate setting of hearing the Scripture, such as chapel, I do not always that it father than just hearing the Word, and I think this is partially because there is not enough time to let the Word settle in before moving on. But I usually take what I read as a call to something. Oddly enough, I find that when I read the Scriptures aloud to myself, it gets inside me more than just reading silently. It brings the personhood of God to bear. But it is more than that too, it's something I can't put into words, it is communion, or correspondence. The Scripture itself is not one way, because the Word dwells in us, it manifests itself in us. And prayer is not an entirely separate exercise from reading the Scriptures, for the latter calls for us to engage in the first without ceasing.

     I think the gap between the two is perhaps actually rather simple to explain. We think of Scripture as a recorded sermon, rather than a conversation. We take in what Scripture is saying as if there is no one there, and response seems silly, like clapping for the speaker after listening to a podcast in your room, alone. But what if those same principles were told to you by someone that was flesh-and-blood standing in front of you? Only the most bitter or socially oblivious would find it acceptable to not respond at all. We do not shema the Scriptures when we forget that it is a personal and infinite God who is speaking to us.

“Shema, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” ~ Deuteronomy 6:4-9