Seminary Life

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have really been enjoying the seminary life, classes specifically. It has been so nice to have my mind stretched and to think about ideas that I wouldn't normally think to ponder. For instance...

Who are people of God? OR Who is the people of God? Is the second way of asking improper English? Not according to the Greek. So further into this question...Is/Are the people of God the Jews/Israel? Or is/are the people of God the Gentiles? I had no idea that this was actually an issue! I had always assumed that the people of God is made up of whoever accepts the gospel! Right? Or not? Hmm...

Another interesting point that has been discussed is heaven. Or is it earth? Where will we be when we die? What will eternity look like? And how will our beliefs about the end times affect how we live today? For example, some believe that when we die, we will go "up" to heaven and live there with God for eternity. I had grown up believing this. I hadn't really thought much of it...live on earth, die, go to heaven. Done. (except not "done" because eternity has no "done") But recently - actually before we arrived at seminary but brought up again once here - I heard that there are another ideas about what eternity will be like. In fact, there are many, many variations of ways to imagine the end of time! Perhaps heaven is just a "waiting place" for people who have died before they come back to earth at the time of Jesus' return when he establishes his Kingdom on earth...on the actual ground that we walk on today. If we believe this, we'd better be taking care of our planet now because we have, say, the rest of eternity left to live here! I had always thought that the old earth (the one we are living on now) would pass away and that we would be in heaven. This new idea of spending eternity on this very same ground (though everything will have been made perfect and is now God's Kingdom) is interesting... In the end, I still believe part of what I believed before: whatever happens will happen, no matter what we think will happen. And either way, whether we spend eternity in the clouds or here on earth, we were appointed as stewards of creation, so we should care for the environment. Sorry to ramble on, but there is so much going through my mind right now! My brain is getting alot of exercise after sitting fairly dormant (at least academically) for a couple years!

There are some things that I just don't really care for in the classroom setting. Morning classes are a struggle...somehow my eyelids just seem to be so much heavier before 11am than after! And I also don't really care for all the history "stuff". For some it's math that just floats right over their heads. For other it's science or English. For me it's history. I just can't seem to put it all together or make any sort of sense of it at all. It is all just random facts with no sense of a timeline or significance or big picture. Well, ok, I can grasp some of the significance, but most of history just goes right over my head! (and I'm left staring at the clouds in sheer boredom)