November 19, 2007
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Putting my feet up
It’s Sunday evening and the first time since last week began that I have had the chance to put my feet up on the coffee table. Last week was a bit of a whirlwind as I stayed up til 3 in the morning a few times working on a seminary assignment and preparing and taking a Greek exam. If I wasn’t studying (when was I not?), I was watching Joshua (his preschool was closed for Veterans’ Day), at work, sick with food poisoning, at the doctor’s, attending lectures and at ETS with my eyes turned toward Biblical equality once again.
Lectures
I attended quite a few lectures this past week. I heard two lectures from Dr. Richard Bauckham, wherein I walked away being quite assured that the gospels were based upon eyewitness testimonies (meaning the Jesus who is my Lord and Savior is indeed a historical Jesus — who truly walked on this earth).I also heard a really touching and enlightening lecture from Rev Richard Howell, head of the Evangelical Fellowship of India and native to India. Richard taught us a bit about the caste system in India and also the oppression of women. He described how it is in the culture for women to worship their husbands (literally) as gods and how accepted it is for their husbands to “discipline” them. These women say, “It was right that my husband beat me.” He shared from his own experience of how Christ transformed his whole family — how God subsequently used his mom mightily to plant many churches — and concluded with moist eyes, “Let the women serve the Lord!” — for without his mother’s ministry, many lives would still be in darkness.
On the same night, I also had the privilege of hearing from Dr. David Claydon, who had been left an orphan as a young boy because his parents (missionaries) were murdered. He taught us about the oppression of Muslim women, the depersonalization of burkas, and the horrible reality of “honor killing” in Muslim communities. He concluded by contrasting Muslim depersonalization of women to the status of women in the Bible – i.e. the value of women as equal to men, as defined by God.
Post-Fire Cleanup
On Saturday, we went with our friends from our seminary and others from their church to help a man whose house had been destroyed by the recent fires in San Diego. His house was way out past the tree groves, so we had to drive through a lot of scathed land to get to it. It was the first time that Sam & I had driven through areas which were affected by the fires. It really silenced us to see the flattened land, sticks and stumps that were once vibrant trees and the houses that were eaten by the hungry flames.We drove by a palm tree ‘farm’, and I could see rows and rows of baby palm trees as well as grown ones which were either scorched at the tops or at the bottoms — and I couldn’t help but think sadly about how long it must’ve taken for those trees to grow and how much loss that would mean for the owners, because the reality is that they simply cannot grow their groves of trees back to that height and age in a matter of a few weeks. Growth takes time.
Arriving at our work site, we learned that the man’s house we were going to help clean up was, sadly, not only his home but also his work. He had some kind of steel business that was right in his home, so that meant that not only did he lose his place of refuge but his livelihood as well – in one fell swoop. This reality only dawned on me as I spent hours sifting through the debris to remove the roof tiles from the ashes in order to uncover and leave behind whatever steele and metal objects remained underneath. The man didn’t want us to chuck any of the metal stuff just in case it was something he could salvage somehow. As we worked laboriously, trying to avoid getting ashes into our eyes and masks, digging and breaking apart some of the remains of the house, I was struck again by how ironic it is that something good can be so bad. Strange, isn’t it, how fire, when contained and put in the right context can give life – heat and warmth and sustenance, but when it’s not rightly contained, when it submits to none but its own lusts, can bring death and destruction. So grateful, though, that even as we were driving away from the site, I could see signs of new life already — as I spied small green beginnings in a field of brown and black. God can always resurrect and give life to that which was dead.
Hanging Out
Our Saturday evening was topped off by two birthday parties (Happy Bday to Trevor and Jennilyn) — where we got to play some games and talk and laugh and have fun! About 12:30 when everyone was ready to go home, I was ready for at least 5-6 more rounds of Nertz… oh well.
Field Trip
Today, Sam & I went to the Natural History Museum and spent three hours at the Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibit. We had gone over the significance of the discovery of these Old Testament scrolls to our faith at the beginning of our Hermeneutics class, so it was such a treat to actually see these old Scrolls. They are “the best evidence for the accuracy of the Masoretic texts” (read: means our OT is accurate and trustworthy) (Fee & Strauss, p. 112). It’s so great that these scrolls, which preceded the earliest known Hebrew manuscript by nearly ten centuries, had been preserved and found! Praise the Lord!And now, after a lovely dinner that my dear husband made for us as a toast to 15 months of wonderful marriage, I can put up my feet and rest.
