It was a decision that was more than a year in the making, researching, writing, perfecting…obsessing; but like I often find the case to be, it took the coercion of a deadline (even an extended one) to force me to make my decision. In trying to decide which grad school to attend, I made as much use of my personal relationship with God that I could leverage, praying and asking for signs and dreams. I developed an affinity for the ‘dream’ revelation after a vivid dream that took place little more than 2 years ago now, in the middle of a course on apocalyptic literature, which having forced me to read Daniel about 7 times in a two weeks span, apparently had a profound effect on my subconscious. It was not long after waking, processing, sharing the dream with others, and writing it down that I realized it was not the first dream with profound metaphorical or allegorical implications that could be described as nothing less than ‘revelatory,’ about my current life situation or perhaps even the future. As I train more and more to effectively become a scientist of the Bible and Ancient Near Eastern culture I feel it is important to maintain some grounding in the individual spiritual experience, and dreams are something that provide an outlet for that because they escape the realm of present scientific verification. Granting my very skeptical nature, dreams allow me to circumvent the irresistible desire to discern if they are merely illusory, or genuinely theophanic, they can be neither dismissed nor verified, and I like it that way. I think perhaps it’s someone of a gentleman’s agreement between God and I; I ask for little more certain than a dream, and I suspend my skepticism when they come. From time to time, it works, and it’s really the only somewhat objectively manifest spiritual function that I experience. All that said, I got no dreams…apart from ones without the trappings I expect in the aforementioned ‘revelatory’ sort.
What I got instead were signs. What I forgot to ask for however was the means to interpret them… Doing the manual labor I spend so much of time occupied with, my mind has the freedom to roam and contemplate decisions like this one, and there were a few moments when I felt something was being show (or shouted) to me. The first was the shepherds that daily graze their sheep and goats in the field adjacent to our worksite, the pleasant simplicity and serenity of this daily scene offered me some rest and reassurance that the sun would still rise regardless of what I chose, and I was able to be at rest merely in watching the herds among the other various critters scurrying about the work site. Two other events I interpreted as signs I couldn’t deduce a substantive meaning from despite my feeling that they had one. I believe it was a Saturday that I came to the work site to put in some extra work, hammering away at decades old window sealant that had hardened in the frames of broken out windows. I stepped away for a moment to use the bathroom, and at that very instant a tremendous branch, the size of a large tree itself, simply snapped off and landed on the fence bordering the work site and our neighbors property. Being out of sight, I assumed the loud sound was some children that have vandalized the property in the past, and I thought to myself “at last, an opportunity to confront them and yank them by the ear to their parents.” When I came around the corner and saw this huge branch blocking my path, I was surprised to say the least. As I write this, two things come to mind, the first that the tree falling on the fence was merely to say I was on the fence, a fairly obvious observation…or perhaps it was a reminder of a scene in the originally dream I mentioned earlier which itself contained a large broken tree on its side. The next sign occurred a few days later after I flipped over a brick to discover a scorpion beneath it. Keen to keep it as a pet and show it off to my neighbors I caught it in a water bottle and continued working. As I finished working and reached for my water bottle for a drink I remembered at the last moment to look down to make sure it was the bottle of water and not the bottle of scorpion. It was indeed the bottle of water, but the notion of having the option to drink refreshing water or a scorpion, and my heightened sensitivity to looking for signs meant I took this to be one, though I couldn’t discern which school was the water and which was the scorpion.
The final spiritual contribution to my decision was when, hours before the deadline, I prayed, and grabbed my, by now dusty, Bible to sit down to read it for direction. I opened it at random, like so many middle schoolers seeking divine guidance, but the place to which it opened truly did have meaning for me. It opened to James 1, likely not due to a divine hand, or my own, but because the pages and their binding had grown so accustomed to opening there. This truly was a sign, for as I read the familiar words I was reminded of who I was and received the affirmation that as long as I was true to myself, kept the words of James that I am so passionate about close to my heart and continued to persevere under trial, I would receive the crown of life promised by God.
It was with this divine blessing, some incredible and unexpected financial contributions from my immediate family, and enough planning an calculating for a lifetime on my part, that I’ve decided to attend Harvard.
So now, what does this mean for my ministry in the Middle East? The obvious questions is concerning it’s length. I will start Harvard’s program in mid-June which means that I will be coming back to America as of June, just a month from now. While this puts a hold on ministry here, I sincerely believe the training I receive at Harvard will, in the long run, allow me to be of far greater service to the current situation in Israel-Palestine, and perhaps the entire Middle East and America as well. As I mentioned in a prior blog, one of the reasons Harvard was my number one choice was because of its pluralistic environment. While I understand “pluralistic” is a vulgar word to many conservative Christians, attending Harvard Divinity School will provide me with opportunities like no other seminary in the world to study in precisely the situation I find myself here, with the hope of an outcome that will allow me to serve better here because of it. It also doesn’t hurt that I will have a world class education from the top university and top Biblical Studies and theology scholars on the planet.
I have a lifelong history of pairing ministry with the academic study of the Bible and hope that you too can see attending seminary as a continuation of my ministry rather than an interruption of it. In fact, I hope you see it as the opposite, in my commitment to do Masters level work in theology I hope you can see that in so doing I have made a lifelong commitment to serving God. Because of this, I would also welcome continued financial support through seminary if you feel so called, as there still remains a substantial need to be met, both in the money I have spent ministering here, as well as in what I will need once I begin seminary.
From my past, and future blogs I hope you can see that I truly do love serving here, the life, the culture, the places, the people, I could go on. God willing I will not be gone long.
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