I Found the Perfect Man

Hey friends! How are you? How's life in the midst of COVID-19 for you? Here in N.I. lockdown restrictions are easing up slowly but surely. But because we are still in the middle of a global pandemic, things still aren't fully back to 'normal' yet. Things are opening though and it feels a little bit more like the world is turning again. The last four weeks I've been apart of the Kingdom Bible Course, a course focusing on biblical literacy that's been split into three modules. The first being 'Biblical Overview', the second 'Jesus', and the last 'What Do We Do Now?'. Our speakers have been a mix of members of our community who live here and can give lectures in person, and others who live all over the world and have Zoom'ed in. Let's all just take a moment and raise a hallelujah for Zoom.

Weeks 1 and 2 were really about asking myself what I believe about the Bible and who/what taught me those things. Then really inviting Holy Spirit into those understandings and asking for clarification, or wisdom in what to unlearn. I spent these two weeks (and the ones following!) submitting my ideas and thoughts and values to the Lord, all the while trying to walk in humility with the fact that maybe I don't actually know everything. Believe me, I was just as surprised as you are to discover that I actually have so much left to learn before I know everything there is to know about anything. Go figure. Anyway, some main ideas and questions I came away with these weeks are the following: 1) Who am I studying the Word with? Is it only the people who look and think like I do? 2) Who has given me access to Jesus and how does that affect how I view him? Who am I giving access to Jesus and how am I affecting their view of him? Who am I restricting access to Jesus for and again, how does that impact their view of God? 3) There are different genres in the Bible! That might not be new to you but that's something I never knew before. Why's it so important? Because you don't read a piece of poetry the same way you'd read a narrative and so on. They each tell their stories in different ways and it not only informs how you should look at the information presented but it's also really beautiful, I think, to know that there was so much creativity used when the Bible was written!

Week 3 was chock full of great topics like the humanity of Jesus, church history, and how we view the cross. Jesus' humanity was a big one for me. In my experience there's always been a lot of talk about his divinity but we know that he was fully God AND fully man. I realized that I've always viewed Jesus as some sort of pseudo-human. Like he was just God pretending to be a human. But what I walked away with this week was a new understand that Jesus wasn't looking at the people around him as the perfect models of what it means to be human but in fact, Jesus was and is the most perfect example of what it is to be human. Woah. Mind blown. Again, maybe not new to you but transformative for me. I'm still processing the implications of everything that I'm taking in. Trusting Holy Spirit's guidance to help discern what is right and true and what needs to be set aside. But boy oh boy has my mind, and heart, been moving. Throughout the weeks we've also done the practice of reading scripture together as community. We've read through Matthew and are halfway through John. We've learned a new technique to learn passages, Word by Heart. It's not about simply memorizing the words but learning to tell the story and experiencing scripture in a whole new way.

I hope you've enjoyed that little summary of what's been going in my space and I hope that maybe I've given you some new food for thought. I'd love to hear your comments and thoughts about anything I've mentioned or really whatever's on your mind!