Today, as I took a midterm (yes, a midterm only 4 weeks into school), I wondered if my professor would accept a letter about how this class is impacting my mind and heart in lieu of answers to the actual exam questions. I can imagine the letter now:
Dear Dr. Bayer,
I am sorry for not knowing the answers to questions 27-100, but I just wanted you to know that the content of this class is really impacting my life. I attach this letter to an otherwise blank exam, in hopes that you will forgive my lack of knowledge and still give me an A for engaging the content in this way.
Sincerely,
Caroline Lamberth
Ok, I kid just a little bit. This is my favorite class and I really studied. I even had fun studying (such a dork I know) And Mom, don’t freak out, I definitely knew more than just a fourth of the answers to the questions asked. I did laugh however, that a good portion of my notes were not factual but devotional in nature. While those particular notes probably did not help me much on the test this morning, the Lord is really using them to stir my heart and impact my life.
I don’t usually like to throw a bunch of quotes up here without engaging them. But today I will give you just a few, so you can get a little taste of what I am learning up here and so that perhaps it may stir in your heart as well...
Here they are, from seriously one of my favorite professors, Dr. Bayer...
On sin- “If you have the idea that it is something you can manage, you have already lost.”
“Stay out of the mission of god if you want to stay away from the broken, the messy, the alien...out of trouble.”
‘You may not survive God’s mission, but the mission of God is going to be triumphant.”
On agendas- “The way I align myself with God’s agenda is giving up my plan to have a tidy, good, nice life. Jesus will interrupt you...he loves you too much.”
“Am I really just seeking a Christianized personal agenda?”
“The gospel is not ‘try Jesus’ but rather this is God’s world and he is teaching men how and enabling men to live in it.”
And the one I can’t get out of my head, “Do you really want to be a part of the mission of God, or do you just want to live you life with a little Christian paint over it?”
Oh, and my favorite quote from our book, The Message of Acts in the History of Redemption by Dennis Johnson:
"Acts shows us what prayer is like when praying people recognize the presence of Jesus the Lord. It is joyful and confident, for the one who is Lord and Christ is among us to hear our needs. There is awe-filled fear when we recognize his terrifying holiness. There is a pre-occupation not with ourselves- our ailments, comforts, conveniences, hurt feelings- but with the great cause of the king who walks in our midst. We ask to receive from his hand whatever will make us serviceable to him, useful for his saving purposes. We pray not because we must, but because we may, not out of lust for his gifts, but out of love for the giver; not to bend his will to ours but to bend our wills to his."
What a blessing it has been to hear and read these things day in and day out. Though meditating on these things might not give me a better grade, it is my hope that it will give me a deeper understanding the gospel and a deeper desire to live that gospel out in all the realities of my life.
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