So after a week in the word I'm wondering how we're doing? Have you kept up? Learning anything new? Do you hear God speaking through his Word?
Truth be told, its been more of a challenge for me than i expected. Not so much the amount of reading (I read... that's what I do...), but its felt so chopped up. I feel overstimulated jumping from one place to another. Not to mention, when I start reading a story I tend to want to finish it. Quirky, I know.
This dizzying onslaught of various storylines reminds me of the closest thing I have to an immersian experience: Introductory Greek. Now, mind you, it wasn't a true immersian experience - not at all, actually - but the hoops my brain had to jump through were similar. I recall my prof, Brad Eastman, telling us that a lot of us wouldn't make it through the semester. The reason? Because for the first few months it was all going to be a blur of information that we struggled to make sense of. He called this phase of Greek learning "The Fog." He also reassured us that if we were willing to walk through the fog, there would be a moment where it would lift suddenly, and everything that we couldn't see in the fog would come clear. And he was right!
I love studying how God designed the brain (she said pushing her glasses toward the bridge of her nose), and so I was fascinated to learn what was behind this "Fog" phenomenon. Here it is: When a person is first exposed to a slew of new information (particularly information that the brain can't connect easily to something already learned), it creates a bunch of extra synapses for each neuron involved (The Fog). Unsure of which one makes the right "connection," it keeps them all to see which are used in similar, but different situations. Over time, the connections that are used frequently develop stronger connections, and those used rarely die off (the fog lifts)!
So, right now, I'm in the fog. My brain wants to connect these storylines into a single narrative, it wants to dwell on each one to go deeper, it wants to find out what happens NEXT! Its taking patience for me to relax into the discipline of slowing down to one chapter in a storyline, and its taking discipline not to expect myself to find some deep meaning in four separate passages if its not there today. For me, this is a decision to walk bravely through the fog. Right now in Ezra we're rebuilding the temple - huge excitement... and then in Acts we're tearing it down (or at least that's what Stephen's being accused of... and its what has already happened at the time of the book's writing). I'm puzzling over a few of the details in his speech. Holly's comment about his being falsely accused of speaking against the law of Moses has me thinking about Christ's relationship to the law. The tactics used against him remind me of the way disputes are sometimes handled by Christians today, and I'm wondering about the cost of discipleship and justice. Today I'm reading about Judgement... how not to judge (and how to), and at the same time as all of this I've been witnessing Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, and, wait for it - all of humanity - face judgement for their sin. I'm reading Christ's "sermon" and elsewhere of people railing against the very idea of a sermon.
Add to all this the storyline of Daniel peppered in there because my son Isaac made it his goal to read through the Bible (back in September. His goal is to be finished by March), so today as people tried to trick King Darius in an attempt to get rid of Daniel it triggered for him his recurring questions about why I've lost my job, and why I've been so sad this year, and what it has to do with the church. He cried again today about how much he misses his friends (EVERYBODY there). How everyone knew him there, and how nobody knows him at our new church. Our kids sure knew they were loved there. So, this evening we donned our sackcloth and shared some tears.
One week in and this has already been quite a journey. A journey through a thick fog. But, I'm thinking... if I just keep on down this path a little further, what will I see when the fog clears?
I keep walking.
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