Tuesday Morning Trials

God, I believe.

But sometimes i don’t….Help my unbelief.

I believe that you have given me abundant gifts…but sometimes I just don’t believe it. I’m afraid of the radical changes that would happen in my life if I opened these gifts.

I believe…help my unbelief.

Liturgy as Basketball

Growing up, my parents were always into football–specifically the Vanderbilt Commodores and (after their move from Texas) the Tennessee Titans.

One Saturday when I was around 15 years old, I woke up and found my dad in the living room watching a Titans playoff game. I hadn’t yet grown to appreciate the game the way my parents did, but I sat down with my Dad and asked if he would explain to me what was going on. He explained to me the different positions, the rules, the penalties–this game that had seemed boring and confusing to me before took on new life as I began to understand and appreciate its complexities. That first game that I watched was actually the Music City Miracle game. The Titans beat the Bills in miraculous fashion and went on to the Super Bowl that year. I watched their whole playoff run religiously and I’ve been obsessed with the game of football ever since.

Now I’m at Duke and we have a terrible football team but an amazing basketball team. However, I’ve never come to learn and understand the ins and outs of basketball the way I did with football. I would go to basketball games during college, but I just ended up talking with my friends nearby and cheering whenever everyone else cheered, though I didn’t know the reasons why. Even though I am at this great institution with a nationally renowned basketball program, I’m not able to fully appreciate it.

I went to an Anglican worship service a few days ago, and I felt like I was watching a basketball game. I stood up when everyone else stood and recited the things I was supposed to, but I didn’t understand why. I can’t appreciate fully what is going on because that way of doing church is so foreign to me. The cultures of the churches that I grew up in were not liturgical.

If I as an educated “churched” person feel confused by liturgy, what does that mean for those who are uneducated and unchurched who try to access liturgical churches? Do people need a commentator/instructor by their side during the whole service explaining the meanings of the different rites? Is that even practical? If church is supposed to reflect culture, what culture is being reflected in high church services? I don’t think it is one that the majority of minority, uneducated, or poorer peoples can relate to.

Reflections after being in Divinity School for one month

1 Samuel 15:17 – “And Samuel said, ‘Though you are little in your own eyes, are you not the head of the tribes of Israel? The LORD anointed you king over Israel.’”

I surely did not realize what I was getting myself into. Irenaeus, Rauschenbusch, Gonzalez, Origen…names that I didn’t care about one month ago I have now become intimately familiar with. I go to school and I study. I come home and I study. I listen to Leviticus as I’m folding my laundry. I miss 40 hour work weeks.

Even worse than the stretching of my brain has been the stretching of my soul. I spent the last 3 years working at a nonprofit urban ministry in Washington, DC and my soul grew exponentially. I experienced many new things and gained a deeper understanding of poverty, justice, and race, among other things. Yet it seems that God has brought me here to stretch me even further. At Duke Divinity, the goal is the training of pastors to engage with the Bible and the world in an intelligent and holy manner.

What this means in essence is that I’m being transformed. I spent this past summer in Nashville living comfortably–spending time with friends and family. I had grown used to my life in DC of work, friends, and ministry. Yet here, there is little comfort—everything about the way I think and the way I live is being shaped into the way that God desires for me to think and live…and it is exhausting and painful at times.

In 1 Samuel 15:17, Samuel confronts Saul after Saul disobeyed God’s command to destroy everything of the Amalekites. He says to Saul (I’m paraphrasing), “Even though you don’t think it’s a big deal that you disobeyed God just now, it is. Don’t you realize that God entrusted you with great power and responsibility when He made you king of Israel? Don’t you realize that God has called you to something greater than what you are now?”

I’ve heard this being echoed throughout my life recently in the ways that God is forming my thought and my actions. Even thought I am a lowly seminary student, who constantly feels “less than” because of the overwhelming amount of material that I’m required to learn and because of the awkwardness of being in a new environment with new relationships to form, God has given me this season because he is shaping me for something more. Like Saul, I have the option to go my own way or to submit myself to being transformed into the likeness of God, to be prepared to engage the world and the church in God’s work after I graduate from this place. May I never forget what a worthy calling this is.

 

 

 

january 23

i just finished this ^^ book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller. I read all 254 pages in a 26 hour period.  I highly recommend it. It’s about living life with a purpose in mind, with a story if you will.

november 1

 

one day i went to the grocery store with mijin. i was about to pick out some toilet paper when she said “let me tell you something about toilet paper.” she proceeded to tell me about marcal. it is apparently the only toilet paper made from recycled paper. it’s good to know that my bodily functions aren’t killing trees, although the tp feels like sandpaper on the behind. (ok maybe it’s not THAT bad… but it sure ain’t quilted.)

october 31

 

vivian, tim and i went to a CORN MAZE!!! i’d never been to one before. this one was 5 acres big. they gave you a flag to wave in case you get lost. if you wave it the corn cop will come rescue you. we never had to wave the flag but we did spend a LOT of time being lost. it took us an hour and a half to go through the maze altogether. we were so happy when we finally got out!

october 30

 

the kids play the wii every day. no big deal. but i’d never seen them play it like this…in their own little beanbag chairs-turned-cars.