Most of these beautiful golden leaves are gone now, as it rained most of the past week--but today the sun came back, accompanied by friends Wind and Blue Sky.
In addition to turning in a couple of papers (one large, one small), I also participated in our campus Day of Prayer on Tuesday and led my spiritual formation group's discussion on Thursday. Work has been pretty crazy the past couple of weeks--the admission office has been getting dozens of new applications and it is all I can do just to enter them, much less keep up with the other data entry work! All of that was capped off by a costume birthday party for one of my best friends up here (Janni). She is a graduate of Trinity and works there full-time--so she is one of the most popular people around! This of course meant that there were tons of people at her party. It was a wonderful, fun way to end a crazy week.
So today, I have blown off homework in favor of taking it easy, catching up on editing for The Scrawl (http://www.tiu.edu/scrawl), going to the grocery store/bank/cleaners, drinking hot beverages (i.e. cider and tea) and staring at my Greek commentaries, hoping that they will write my paper for me. As nothing seems to be happening, I have put them aside to sort through some thoughts with you here.
Some (but by no means all) of you know that I will be taking next semester off from Trinity with the possibility of having to transfer to a different seminary next Fall; if you want to hear the whole back story let me know and I'll be happy to fill you in. Suffice it to say, I will be moving back in with my parents and working for several months. In many ways, I am very excited about this--I haven't really been with my family for any significant amount of time since I graduated from high school and I have an opportunity to hone a skill-set that (potentially) has potential. There are many reasons I know this is the right decision but admittedly there are days when I have a hard time with it; yesterday = case in point.
Yesterday was hard because it was glorious. That is, Janni's party was rich: filled with laughter and conversation, food and drink, music and banter... in short, it was filled with community. So much so, in fact, that I found myself aching with the beauty of it and asking for the dozenth time in the past couple of months why God would ask me to leave these people and this place when it seems that it is--that they are--home.
This morning, He answered through His words, as recorded by His beloved friend John: "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him." (12:24-26)
Jesus is not being masochistic here. He is being real with the people who would follow Him. It boils down to the fact that to bear fruit, I have to 'die'; to keep my life, I have to 'lose' it; to serve Him, I have to 'follow' Him; and the result of it all is that the Father will honor me. What a hard-core paradox--but the analogy holds. In nature, as Jesus explained here, something must die for new life to come forth. So it is with the human soul, which has been twisted and blackened by self-centered rebellion for thousands of years now--to bring forth new life, to bear fruit, that self-centered rebellion must die. The time of death becomes the time of life, and the servant is enabled to serve someone other than herself. Indeed, she is able to follow the one that she serves!
But I am not only able to follow, I am required to follow. Serving and following are so intimately linked that it is practically impossible to disentangle them in the words Jesus spoke here. Where He goes, His servant goes and serves; where He goes, His servant serves and goes. It sounds so mercenary when I say it like that--but the foundational reality behind the service and the discipleship remains as poignant as the day God first created us in His image, as heart-wrenching as the day He promised salvation would spring from the curse and as passionate as the day He made that salvation possible by giving up His life to redeem us.
He is with us.
The point of following Him is not just to serve Him, not just to keep my life or not even to bear fruit or receive the Father's honor; the point is to be with Him: "And where I am, there my servant will be also."
So, when the questions come (as I know they will), Jesus' promise will still hold true, and I will still follow because dying for Him is infinitely more rich than living for myself.
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