One Month In....

...two months to go. hehe, that makes it sound like a bad thing. But it's not. It's a great thing! I am surprised at how fast it has gone! Here are my thoughts from the past week:

October 3^rd Monday

Now that I’m finally used to the schedule here at Summit Semester, it gets interrupted. But it’s a good interruption. Eric Smith has come to teach us about the Bible for a week. He taught our first class tonight from 7 to 9. Usually we don’t have class on Mondays because it’s our free day, but he has to get 22 hours of class time a week in order for the college credit(which I didn’t take part in) to apply. He is an intriguing teacher; his knowledge of the Bible and his teaching methods cause me to want to pursue learning about the Bible on a deeper level. In preparation for his arrival, we were supposed to read the first six chapters(139 pages) of The IVP Introduction to the Bible. I completed it today. It took many, many hours, but it was so worth it. It goes through an amazing overview of the Bible(the first six chapters covered the Old Testament) and describes the main themes, messages, relevance for today, main characters, etc in very plain language. I would definitely recommend this book(or what I’ve read) to anyone who desires to get an overview of the Bible in a simple, easy, yet intriguing way.

In addition to The InterVarsity Press Introduction to the Bible, I am also reading Habits of the Mind(Intellectual Life as a Christian Calling). I’m only on the second chapter, but I’m enjoying it. It talks about what an intellect is and how to be an intellect. And I want to be an intellect(though not a snob about it), so it should be very useful. At our family meetings, we are discussing the messages in this book.

In case you’re wondering(since I love schedules), this is my schedule of the week(a little bit changed this week).

Monday is our free day so other than meals or planned events(hiking\camping, trips to town) we have the entire day to ourselves!

8- breakfast(serve yourself if you sleep in)

12:15-lunch

5-Dinner

Tuesday

8-breakfast

9-10:30: Family Meeting

10:30-12: Study Time

12:15: Lunch

1:30-4:30: work crews

5: Dinner

6:30: reading aloud together as a group(right now we’re on Sir Gibby-not a children’s book)

8: small groups

Wednesday

8: breakfast

9-10:30: Solitude

10:30-12:00: Study time

12:15: Lunch

1:30-2:30: Exercise

5: Dinner

7-8:30: Class with Bauman

Thursday

8:breakfast

9-12: Class

12:15: Lunch

1:30-3:00: Class

3:30-4:30: Exercise

5: Dinner

6:30: Reading together

7-8:30: Study time

Friday

8: Breakfast

9-10:30: Class

10:30-12:00: Study time

12:15: Lunch

1:30-2:30: Exercise

5: Dinner

7-8:30: Class

Saturday

8:breakfast

9-12: Class

12:15: Lunch

1:30-3:00: Class

3:30-4:30: Exercise

5: Dinner

6:30: Reading together

7-8:30: Study time

9-10: Bauman’s reading from his book

Sunday

10:Church

12: Lunch at park

12-4: Internet!

5:dinner

7: Movie and discussion(So far we’ve watched Minority Report, The Village, and The Diary of a Mad Black Woman(TERRIBLE!)

October 4^th Tuesday

This morning, in order to figure out what to wear for the day, I looked out the window. To my delight and excitement, it was raining! This is weird for me, but I’ve really been wanting it to get cold. Usually I dread winter’s arrival. I’m pretty sure I want it to get cold because I didn’t bring very many summer clothes, so I’m sick of them. Or maybe it’s just because lodges in Colorado are super cozy during the cold season. Or perhaps it’s because Colorado is prettier than Utah in the fall season. I don’t know what it is, but I’m super excited. It rained all day long and fog drifted among the mountains so beautifully.

Tonight is a bit different than our usual Tuesday nights. The pastor and worship pastor, their families, and the rest of their small group came to eat dinner with us. We also worshiped together for about an hour. Then for small group, both girl small groups got together to make brownies and watch Sabrina. That was pretty fun, although I fell asleep a lot during the movie.

Also I’m super excited because for work crew today I got to bake and cook for three hours. Ha! Plus, I got to learn about the Bible being inspired or not for three hours! Exciting day altogether, I must say. On a sad note, listening to Anberlin makes me miss my siblings. L

October 6^th, Thursay

I LOVE RAIN! It’s been raining for the past three days, and I’m in love with it. I love hearing it pour down on the roof as I sit in class learning how to summarize the Bible into one sentence. I love feeling it on my face as I run to the lodge at 6:30 in the morning to pray with some of my fellow classmates. Ah. I thank God for rain and the beauty it brings.

I’m really enjoying my classes this week which are focusing on Biblical Foundations. So far we have covered the inspiration, transmission, and translation of the Bible, schools of interpretation, theories about inspiration, theories about inerrancy, the canon, the apocrypha, the Bible’s authority, and how and why to study the Bible. Eric Smith is a great teacher, I must say so myself. And IVP is a very helpful book, however, I wish it were more in depth. I guess that’s why it’s an Introduction.

I didn’t expect snow this soon, but it has arrived. Right before lunch we saw the first white signs, and everyone ran excitedly onto the porch yelling, “SNOW!” “It’s snowing!!!” It was a pretty sight and hilarious to watch everyone freak out about it, especially Devon from Florida who has never seen snow. During sports time, the volleyball addicts actually played while it was snowing. I think they are crazy. They’ve been out there for over an hour now. Crazy heads. I’m not much of a snow person, so I’m kind of a loner. But that’s ok. I like watching everyone else get excited. Plus I think the snow is much prettier and nicer out here since I don’t have to drive in it or get stuck in it or shovel it(at least not yet).

October 8^th, Saturday

Evangelical Christians need to change the way they read the Bible. I’m an evangelical Christian. I need to change the way I read my Bible(hehe..those are the kind of argument type things I’m learning to use). Most of what I’m about to write comes from Eric Smith or is a paraphrase of what he said. I agree completely with what he says. “Evangelicals don’t know, broadly speaking, what the Bible teaches. It’s possible to memorize, and not know what it means. It’s possible to be around the church, but not be part of the church, not understand what’s being taught.” “We read the Bible in bits and pieces. We take “pretty” verses and apply them to ourselves(Philippians 4:13, Jeremiah 29:11)(We take them and apply them to our lives even though a lot of the times they aren’t directed towards us at all) And we put them with pretty pictures(this isn’t bad all the time, we just need to watch ourselves). We latch onto verses without understand them or their context. When we know verses here and there, we don’t really have a Christian worldview. We need to know the whole Bible.”

My thoughts: Christians need to change. We need to start reading the Word in it’s context; we need to understand who the author is and who the audience is; we need to stop applying everything to our lives and just read the Word for what it is; we need to know the Word better, so much better…It’s honestly pretty discouraging to see how badly the church has become. We take God’s inspired Word of truth way too lightly. We study it in our “quiet times” because that’s what we ought to do and because we’ve been told to do it for so long. We need to question why exactly we’re studying the Bible; we need to question our motives.

Looking back on this week, I honestly must say, it was exhausting. I took the most naps I have since I got here, and I had to drink lots of caffeine to stay awake during class(it wasn’t boring. I was just super tired). It was spiritually exhausting too. I feel like I’m a mess right now. So prayers would be greatly appreciated right now. J

October 9^th, Sunday

Tonight I get to learn some Greek! One of the mentor’s, Koert, is going to seminary next year, so to refresh his Greek, he decided to teach us what he knows. I’m very very excited. For a long while I have been wanting to go to seminary just to take Greek and Hebrew, so being able to learn a bit of Greek for free is super duper awesome. Hurrah!