Thursday Was A Great Day

Apologies to those of you who are looking for more regular updates. Now that we're back at school, not much happens - I get up, go to work or class (or both), eat dinner, study until the coffee shops close, and then go home and sleep. So a) it's pretty repetitive, and b) there's not much free time to write anyway.

That said, today was special. Nothing unusual happened, but this afternoon I found myself thinking, "Wow... this has really been a great day!"

Last night, I translated these words from Psalm 8:

When I see your heavens, the work of your fingers,
The moon and the stars which you have put in place,
What is man, that you remember him?
The son of man, that you attend to him?

And it struck me - what an amazing privilege to actually be able to read this in the original. But even more significant, to hear the psalmist's words and realize they apply to me - who am I, Christian Cryder, that God actually cares for me?

In the midst of the infinite cosmos, here I am a mere speck of dust, who will come and go in a few years time without so much as a ripple in the big picture of things. I epitomize insignificance, and yet God takes a personal interest in me. His attention makes me significant in spite of myself. The Psalms are filled with this kind of language.

At any rate, that's what I was thinking about last night, and then again this morning as I spent a few minutes reflecting before heading off to class. Speaking of class, here's what today looked like...

• 8:30-10:30, Modern Age - we talked about how Jonathon Edwards' desire to contextualize the gospel in plain language actually paved the way for many of the theological errors that cropped up in the 2nd Great Awakening (lot's of releveance here as we think about church planting - how do we communicate theological truth in non-technical language and yet guard against theological error that can kill a church?)
  
  
• 10:30-11:00, Small Groups - we paused for a few moments to pray for one another (isn't it amazing that God actually delights in our requests, our turning to him in need?)
  
  
• 11:00-1:00, Psalms - one of my favorite classes, today we pondered God's hand in inspiration, not merely in the hand of the original authors, but through all the redactions, developments, NT re-readings, even to the readers final conviction that 'this IS the word of God' (if God can deal with the messiness involved in all that, surely he can handle the messiness of my little life?)
  
  
• 1:00-2:00, Lunch - I had the privilege of sharing a table with 2 dear sisters, talking about how all this theology stuff actually plays out in the practice of the church - sharing our frustrations, but also seeing places where the church has actually gotten it right!
  
  
• 2:00-5:00, Human Personality - listening to Ed Welch wrestle with what it means to be created in the image of God, not in abstract terms, but in the lives of real people we encounter every day (it was amazing how much this overlapped and amplified the very themes we had just been discussing over lunch)

So that was my day. And somewhere in the middle of this afternoon, I remember thinking, "Wow, I am so fortunate to be here!" Yes it's hard, yes I'll be glad to be done, to get on to the "real work" of planting a church. But right now I find myself particularly grateful for this present opportunity, to be surrounded by godly believers at school, and by thoughtful unbelievers in the coffee shops, working to pay the bills, yet getting to learn how to love and serve and build up the church of Christ.

I am indeed very fortunate, and this has indeed been a great day!