The Past and Future of Gordon-Conwell | Seminary Student Blogger

April 09, 2013

Dimitri Alldridge 

During the Reformation, Martin Luther was warned that if he started one new church he would start a thousand.

Thankfully, Luther ignored the warning and the protestant Church was born, but sadly the rest of that prophesy also came true.

As Christians we have a nasty habit of dividing. The last figure I heard (from our very own Todd Johnson, no less) is that there are now around 58,000 Christian denominations around the world.

58,000!

Of course, as Luther demonstrated, there is a time for unity and a time for disunity.

The real difficulty comes in telling the time.

In class on Monday, I heard the history of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. In 1969, Harold J. Ockenga, Billy Graham and some other Neo-Evangelicals set up a school that would provide a third way between the Liberals on one side who so absorbed the culture around them as to be indistinguishable, and the Fundamentalist on the other side who so feared culture that they withdrew altogether.

They divided, and they united.

The school, as I understand it, was set up to unite Evangelicals around the truth of the Bible and to prepare them to serve faithfully in churches whatever their denomination and to engage in the culture wherever they were sent.

To that end, Gordon-Conwell doesn’t really exist to serve any particular denomination or any particular church. Instead, it exists simply serve the Church and the Gospel.

Of course I say “simply,” but refusing to be denominational or to align itself with any group more specific than “evangelical” is anything but simple. There are and always will be enormous pressures upon Gordon-Conwell to go one way or another.

And so I fear for Gordon-Conwell and I’m also thankful for it.

In one month’s time (and after a lot of long nights!), I will graduate from Gordon-Conwell.

I will be sad to leave this wonderful and special place.

I only pray that by God’s grace it will remain firmly grounded on God’s Word, serving his Church and for his Glory.

If we do that then we will divide from some and unite with others, perhaps that’s just the way it has to be.
 

Tags: Author: Dim Alldridge , current students , future students , student blogger , thoughtfully evangelical

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On Risking the Man Card and Surrendering to Love | Seminary Student Blogger

April 04, 2013

Tim Norton 

“Imagine God thinking about you. What do you assume God feels when you come to mind?”
—Dr. David Benner, Surrender to Love

How do you answer this question? Seriously though. As seminarians, most of us know of God’s love from a theological standpoint. It’s an objective truth to be believed (and rightly so). This question isn’t about that. It’s attacking the heart. Take a minute to pause and think. Now, give me your best, non-Sunday School, non-seminarian, non-intellectualized answer. What’s your gut feeling? What’s your emotional reaction to this question? What do you assume God feels when you come to mind?

As you might’ve guessed, I’m reading this book called Surrender to Love by David Benner. Now look, I realize that such a book title immediately puts my “man card” in question. Surrender to love. It sounds like a Nicholas Sparks novel. While it’s true that this book uses “gooey” words way more than I’d like, it’s also true that Dr. David Benner knows what he’s talking about—and what he’s talking about is directly aimed at people like me. You see, deep down I assume that God’s initial response to me is mostly disappointment. Sure he loves me, but man he does that in spite of his disappointment over my sin. His love barely peaks through the cracks of the blanket of my mess-ups. I am encouraged to accept God’s love and I think, “Well if I can just stop hurting God, stop disappointing him so much, I’ll be able to feel is love more. So, I better get my life together because I know this love of God thing is a big deal.”

Benner challenges his readers that God’s primary response is one of love. This perfect love is the only motivation that will result in lasting obedience. It is the only motivation that will invite surrender and devotion. It’s all too easy to be obedient by a subtle works—righteousness, wrapping it in spiritual language to continue the deception. For those of us in the latter camp, it’s very difficult to change our perception of the Lord. How do I trust perfect love? Better yet, how do I experience it? Because, really, we can intellectually know something all we want, but it won’t affect change until we experience it.

What if we were absolutely convinced of God’s love, not just theologically, not just experientially, but both? What if our identity was rooted on being the object of God’s ruthless affection? Yes, God’s justice and wrath and holiness cannot be neglected. But it is the just, holy YHWH that sends his son as the biggest gesture of love in all of human history. And none of us did a dang thing to earn it. Nothing. Period. I find it’s easier to accept that in reference to salvation and much harder to accept it in terms of living out that salvation. But it’s true. I still haven’t done anything to earn God’s love.

Benner’s suggestion? Meditate on God’s love as presented in the Scriptures. This isn’t earth-shattering news. And so I offer to you what I’ve been doing for the past several days. Read these Psalms, take special note of the imagery of God’s relation to us and then daydream about it. Let your mind turn it over and over. After all, the mind isn’t renewed in an instant. It takes dedicated time of meditation on the Word of God.

Psalm 23

The LORD is my shepherd, I lack nothing.

He makes me lie down in green pastures,

he leads me beside quiet waters,

he refreshes my soul.

He guides me along the right paths

for his name’s sake.

Even though I walk

through the darkest valley,

I will fear no evil,

for you are with me;

your rod and your staff,

they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me

the presence of my enemies.

You anoint my head with oil;

my cup overflows.

Surely your goodness and love will follow me

all the days of my life,

and I will dwell in the house of the LORD

forever.

Psalm 91

Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High

will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.

I will say of the LORD, “He is my refuge and my fortress,

my God, in whom I trust.” 

Surely he will save you

from the fowler’s snare

and from the deadly pestilence.

He will cover you with his feathers,

and under his wings you will find refuge;

his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.

You will not fear the terror of night,

nor the arrow that flies by day,

nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness,

nor the plague that destroys at midday.

A thousand may fall at your side,

ten thousand at your right hand,

but it will not come near you.

You will only observe with your eyes

and see the punishment of the wicked.

If you say, “The LORD is my refuge,”

and you make the Most High your dwelling,

no harm will overtake you,

no disaster will come near your tent.

For he will command his angels concerning you

to guard you in all your ways;

they will lift you up in their hands,

so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.

You will tread on the lion and the cobra;

you will trample the great lion and the serpent.

“Because he loves me,” says the LORD, “I will rescue him;

I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name.

He will call on me, and I will answer him;

I will be with him in trouble,

I will deliver him and honor him.

With long life I will satisfy him

and show him my salvation.”

Tags: Author: Tim Norton , biblically-grounded , student blogger , thoughtfully evangelical

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Among Us | Seminary Student Blogger

April 02, 2013

Kate Hightower 

We watched Thee here among us
Tender hands and thunderous eyes
Healed our every darkness
Which brought Thee to demise.

Thou spotless lamb among us
No wrong committed thus
We watched Thee hang and die there
So lost upon the cross.

The Father from above us
Was pleased to have Thee crushed
For me to breath eternal
And turn my accusers hushed.

Thou gracious Christ among us
Oh what joy when Thou rose
What glorious Death begotten
Defeat brought to Thy foes.

Hail Eternal King inside us
Breathing life into our bones
We’ll sing Thy song forever
No more our sorrow moans.

Tags: Author: Kate Hightower , biblically-grounded , spiritually vital , student blogger , thoughtfully evangelical

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Learning from Our Church Fathers: Part 9

March 21, 2013

Donald Fairbairn

Sometime around the beginning of the fifth century, a nun named Egeria from the Latin Christian world took a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. She re-traced the route of the Exodus, visited Mount Sinai, spent three years in Jerusalem, journeyed east to Edessa to see Thomas’s tomb, and then worked her way through Asia Minor to Constantinople. The story of her travels, written in Latin and called Diary of a Pilgrimage in English, contains a wealth of cultural and geographic information and a number of stories interesting to a general reader, stories that vary from the impressive to the extraordinary to the bizarre. I’ll mention one example of each, all taking place in the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

It is impressive that the clergy of the church took such great pains to make sure everyone (including pilgrims from all over the Christian world) could understand the services. The Scripture readings and the liturgy were conducted in Greek, but there was a continuous line-by-line translation of everything into Syriac as the services were conducted. There were also various people present who could explain what was happening to Western visitors in Latin, although they did not translate the whole service. Not only is this a great example of cultural and linguistic sensitivity on the part of the clergy, but it is also a reminder to us that early Christianity was not exclusively Greek and Latin. Indeed, in predominantly Greek-speaking Jerusalem, Syriac speakers far outnumbered Latin speakers.

Egeria’s recounting of the instruction given to those preparing for baptism in Jerusalem is extraordinary. In those days, new Christians were baptized on Easter, and they received instruction in the Christian faith during a period of preparation prior to Easter. (Several examples of such “catechetical lectures” given to instruct the candidates for baptism survive.) Egeria tells us that in Jerusalem this instruction included three hours a day of Scripture reading and sermons, for seven weeks leading up to Holy Week just prior to Easter. During those seven weeks, the candidates would hear the entire Bible read to them and explained. All of us who organize new members’ classes in churches today should be ashamed!

The most bizarre thing Egeria describes is a service on Good Friday. A gold-plated casket was brought out containing wood that was allegedly from Christ’s cross and from the inscription above the cross, and people came forward to touch the wood with their foreheads and to kiss it. But this is not the bizarre part—some readers will know that such practices are routine among many groups of Christians, even today. The bizarre part is that Egeria describes deacons as standing near the holy wood, guarding it. She writes, “It is said that someone (I do not know when) took a bite and stole a piece of the wood of the holy cross. Therefore, it is now guarded by the deacons standing around, lest there be anyone who would dare come and do that again.”

To us, it may seem impossible to reconcile the idea of pilgrim-sensitive, trilingual worship services and extensive instruction of new believers with the idea that someone might think he/she had something to gain by running off with a bite of the cross. Christianity in fifth-century Jerusalem must have been quite a contradictory mix of the profound and the superstitious, we think. But how much different is our version of Christianity? Do not the deep and the superficial, the amazing and the kitschy, sit uneasily side-by-side in most expressions of our faith? Maybe seeing the bizarre in an earlier expression of Christianity will give us incentive to look more carefully at our own, asking whether some of our practices are equally bizarre, but our familiarity with them has hidden that fact from us.

Tags: Author: Donald Fairbairn , current students , faculty blogger , future students , thoughtfully evangelical

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One: I'm Not on a Diet | Seminary Student Blogger

March 19, 2013

Amy Gilbaugh

Lent is here. It's a cherished time in my life, to be honest. I've been particularly pensive regarding this holiday season. What does it mean? What purpose does it serve? Why do we do it?

Usually, I just give something up for these 40 days and feel pretty spiritual about it. I give up soda or dessert or eating between meals. If I’m honest, I really just go on a diet and convince myself it's for my Lord. But it's not. It's for me. I feed my pride and starve my stomach; and my flesh has always loved both sensations.

So this year, I'm doing something different. Rather than removing something from my diet or my day, I'm adding something. I've decided for these forty days to take time to ponder the season of Lent. I'm setting aside about an hour each day to think on the suffering Christ, to feel the weight of the nearing of Good Friday, to write prayers and thoughts of these dark days.

And they are dark, are they not? Read the Texts recounting the days leading up to His execution—He's eating with His men, He's talking with crowds, He's healing the sick and forgiving sins. You know, those are not the preoccupations I would chose if I knew I only had a month left to live. I'd withdraw, pull back, over-eat, over-spend, over-indulge. I'd be with the people who made me feel good about myself and those who have always affirmed me.

And He didn't. He just didn't.

So, if you're up for it, I'd like to invite you to join me in this season. To pray along with me the prayers that will come. To feel the weight, to bear the pain … well, to suffer just a little bit. And in doing so to remember the Suffering One.

I don't think this will be simple. I don't think it will be all that easy either. And I know we won't be able to stay the same.

After all, that's the reason word "Easter" was first inscribed.

Tags: Author: Amy Gilbaugh , student blogger , thoughtfully evangelical

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Caught | Seminary Student Blogger

March 05, 2013

Kate Hightower

He knew she was coming. He had been waiting around the city for it.

He could see them, somewhere in the back of His mind’s eye. Dragging her from her bed, knocking down the faceless man who would pick up his clothes and run from the rage of all of the city’s religious leaders and the mob they gathered. She watched him escape in the midst of the chaos with nothing left but the silver he came with. The feigned intimacy of the night before shattered in a moment like the breaking of glass.

She would die for it.

They yelled this as they drug her through the city, screaming obscenities and brandishing the stones of the Holy Law that they knew so well but didn’t quite understand.

He understood, though. He was there when it was written.

They shoved her ahead of them as they went, kicking her body now heavy with waves of terror, shame and despair shooting through her veins. They picked her back up again, their fingers digging into her soft, feminine skin barely clothed from the sin that now marked her. The sin that dehumanized her to no higher than some kind of diseased animal. The stones pounded her, brutal with the hatred of the force that bore them. They laughed as she cried out in agony, her blood staining the stone’s surfaces.

They were getting closer. He could hear them now. Just as He knew, they were bringing her to Him.

“Teacher!” they cried. “This woman has been caught in adultery, in the very act. Now in the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women; what then do You say?”

It was a test. One He wasn’t blind to. Suddenly, His body grew heavy with the weight of the Mission. They could not imagine an eternity away from Their beloved creation, no matter how twisted with darkness it had become. He bent and drew in the sand before Him. Only His death would save them now... from everything and from themselves all at once.

Breaking His reverie, the mob persisted in their questioning. She watched Him, trembling and bleeding, waiting for His answer.

He stood, frustrated with their lack of understanding. The weight of the balance of the universe crushing His shoulders. It wasn’t just her, the obvious indiscretion. It was all of them. But there was only one truth in the midst of it...

He never wanted to be without them.

“He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.”

His words carried over the scene, laden with His thoughts and with His purpose. He bent again to the words in the sand he had left.

They dropped her before them. She crouched low and covered her head, the sound of the stones falling aimlessly out of the hands behind her filled her ears, echoing in her chest.

They left her there and dispersed.

He stood and watched her for a moment, remembering well the expanse of the life still trembling in front of Him, and the hopelessness that led her to this point.

“Woman,” he said. “Where are they? Did no one condemn you?”

Her eyes met His and she shook her head. “No one, Lord.”

“I do not condemn you either,” He told her as He offered His hand that would soon be scarred with a nail that would save them all.

Tags: Author: Kate Hightower , biblically-grounded , equipping leaders for the church and society , student blogger , thoughtfully evangelical

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The Push and Pull of Grace | Seminary Student Blogger

February 26, 2013

Amy Gilbaugh

Grace is a wanton commodity in our economy of checks and balances. It is a strange creature; a peculiar beast of unknown proportions. We are a people of rush and do-to, and we hurry past grace noting the way she sits awkwardly in the midst of our busy. Grace—the thing of gifting and giving and forgiveness. And just her posture provokes craving and yet makes us shift in our seats. If we’re honest, grace makes us just a bit uncomfortable. We like knowing our debts are paid from our own pockets, our time is managed by our own multi-tasking, and our memories are maintained by our own control. We would rather not have to handle grace or call upon her services. We are a self-propelled people, hastening on and on not taking unless we can repay:

We’d love to come to dinner, but what can we bring?
Oh no, please let me pay; really, I prefer it.
Sure you can take my kids this afternoon, but we’d like to have Tommy our way next week.

And yet, when the sun sets and the schedule calms, when the bustle runs out and the dust of the day settles, we cannot escape the reality that we are a people for whom grace must be prescribed. At the end of the day, at the end of ourselves, we are all too well aware that all our efforts will not suffice. When we are late, those minutes will not return to our watches. When we forget a birthday, no length of words will satisfy. When the money runs out or the credit card is maxed, there simply are no more pennies to throw to the gatherers. And in the midst of our lost minutes and money, grace speaks a language we do not understand. Falling foreign on our ears are words of nothing owed and abundant pardon. And while they are strange to our hearing, they come like balm on our failures nonetheless. Well aware of our shortcomings, we turn ourselves at last to grace. Grace, the stuff that wedges itself in the cracks of our lives, between the lacking and the wanting, holding all together and whispering, All is pardoned, all is covered. Let’s try again tomorrow. And surrendered to her presence we wrap ourselves up and finally let our eyelids rest.

Tags: Author: Amy Gilbaugh , student blogger , thoughtfully evangelical

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Die Well | Seminary Student Blogger

February 21, 2013

Dim Alldridge

I’m not really a fan of blogs. Am I allowed to say that on a blog? Yes I am, and that’s the problem with blogs! I can say anything, and most of the time I don’t have much to say, and what I do have is certainly not worth reading.

Perhaps the other problem with blogs is that most of the people who should write them don’t or can’t.

That is the case with Samuel Rutherford. Praise the Lord that blogs weren’t invented in the 17th century! But letters were and the letters that Rutherford wrote are (I think) some of the most marvelous ever written. Do yourself a favour sometime and get a copy of The Letters of Samuel Rutherford out of the library, make a cup of tea, find a comfy chair and spend a few hours slowly reading the words of a man who really understood, believed and pinned his life upon the truth of God’s sovereignty.

I’m not the only fan of Samuel Rutherford of course. Another fan is Faith Cook and she has taken many of Rutherford’s letters, which almost read like poetry in the first place, and put them in poetic form.

Here is one.

Rutherford once wrote to a friend called John Kennedy who had recently miraculously been saved from an accident at sea that should have killed him. In typical Rutherford style he took the opportunity to write and teach Kennedy from his experience.

But entry was denied—the door was locked
For Christ who holds the key of death
Bade you return, restored your breath,
Your life He kindly spared,
For He who reads the heart, knew well
The armour of your soul was unprepared
To foil the Prince of hell.

Now in the strength of Jesus rise with haste,
Your eager course fulfill with joy, nor waste
The lingering hours of time’s short day;
For evening falls and beckons you away
To stand before the gate.
And then, die well, for life’s last tide
Must swiftly ebb and will for no man wait
One moment more beside.

Die well, and Christ the Master of the grave
Will pilot you through death’s impetuous wave;
He knows the rocks, the shifting sand,
The proud winds bow before His least command.
It is but once we die,
And none returns to try again;
Then well prepare, till you with joy reply.
‘For me to die is gain’.

(Taken from Rutherford’s Letter 22)

Tags: Author: Dim Alldridge , current students , future students , student blogger , thoughtfully evangelical

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A State of Being: Unique | Seminary Student Blogger

February 12, 2013

Kate Hightower

I will never forget the first time I visited Greenwich Village in New York City. It’s got a ragged heartbeat that pounds beneath the street and vibrates up through your feet. Whispers of revolutions long-past carry through the breezes amongst the essence of fresh bread from that one bakery on Bleecker Street. Art was everywhere and in everyone I passed. At 21, I had never seen anything like it. Nor had I ever felt more at home. It was in one of the first few years that I really started to get into Bob Dylan that I was fortunate enough to visit the place that launched him into the world.

I love Bob Dylan.

He’s a restless, wandering genius. He’ll tell you that straight to your face, too. He’ll tell you there’s no one like him. He’ll tell you he was born in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and he is simply a traveling troubadour, fulfilling his destiny before God takes him.

I swallowed this notion whole at a ripe age of 21. So fast that I didn’t even have a chance to see what it was that I’d be digesting. It has been dormant for years, suppressed by methods of my own design. But now, thanks to God’s skillful hand, this notion is beginning to take root somewhere in my soul. It holds up a mirror to my face as it begins to spread throughout my blood stream, it beats wildly, stunning me into a silence I recognize as an old friend, and yet someone I fear with all of my existence. Like a place I could never seem to find, but where I should have been all along. Someone or someplace that was robbed from me early, and I kept trying to get back to.

We’re all just trying to get home, to the house of our Father and bring as many people with us as we can.

As for Bob Dylan, he affected me so much so, that I feel better about the world knowing that he’s out there somewhere doing his thing, still existing, and still fascinating the masses. He’s like a giant, purple ink stain on art history. Even though his music is an acquired taste for most, he still manages to make everybody think. He’s mysterious enough to really make you scratch your head and wonder what he’s up to.

At 21, God used the musings of a legendary musician to show me it’s cool if you’re a little bit different than what everyone thinks you should be. For me, it’s been a life-long battle to finally accept who I was and stop trying to be everyone else. Now, I’m finally starting to really understand what that means.

We should always be making people think. We should all always be a little bit different.

I may still be enamored with the Old Testament, but in the name YHWH, God wasn’t messing around with the details. He told Israel exactly who he was in that name, and therefore painting a glorious picture for us. God’s presence in the name YHWH carries beautifully throughout the rest of the Old Testament when suddenly in a flash of Divine brilliance, it’s incarnated into a Man. The God-Man walked the earth and did the unthinkable...
...he died
...and came back.
...for love.

The world, to this day, really doesn’t know what to do with that. The only thing they have to go on is us. And we, as his followers, are charged with the task of reflecting the weight of that unspeakable magnitude.

We’re all supposed to be a little bit different.

Tags: Author: Kate Hightower , student blogger , thoughtfully evangelical

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At the End of the Day | Seminary Student Blogger

February 05, 2013

 Amy Gilbaugh

There are moments like these, coming at the end of an academic day, that make all the world seem to halt. I've had Hebrew and flipped flash cards and read books and articles and syllabi. The whirr of academics is constant and becomes merely background noise, going almost unnoticed as the semester takes its shape and pace.

I've been reading here all day, and took in words of Your wonder and majesty from the pens of saints long ago—mothers and fathers of our faith who knew the same You and wrote of the very same You in a setting anything but the same. I've translated the Text and furrowed my brow at the philosophical theologians of modernity and tried to wrap my head around the complexities of spiritual formation.

And then I looked up and looked out the window. A storm is rolling in. Thick and rich clouds are churning above and make me feel all so very small.

And I'm reminded again that Your ways are mysterious and wonderful. They can be written about, but there are not books enough to hold them. They can be preached about, but no human language can encapsulate them. Arguments can be formed and persuasions can be attempted, but this day has no lesson better than sitting beneath Your threatening sky.

Tags: Author: Amy Gilbaugh , current students , future students , student blogger , thoughtfully evangelical

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Struggling to Struggle | Seminary Student Blogger

December 06, 2012

Dim Alldridge

This morning I read 2 Thessalonians 1:6-10…

“God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might on the day he comes to be glorified in his holy people and to be marveled at among all those who have believed. This includes you, because you believed our testimony to you.”

Paul writes those words as an encouragement to Christians who are facing persecution. God is just and justice will be done.

Perhaps some of you need to hear that today? Undoubtedly there are Christians around the world today who need to be comforted by these words. Brothers and sisters of ours who are facing terrible opposition for faithfully cherishing the name of our Lord Jesus Christ need to be reminded that God loves them and he will see that justice is done. The faithful will be saved, the guilty will be punished.

There is a time for that truth to be a message of hope.

But that’s not what struck me as I read 2 Thessalonians 1:6-10 over my bowl of cereal this morning. What struck me was the sobering truth that one day…

“He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might.”

I struggled to read those words this morning. I struggled after reading them to pray with my wife and give thanks for those words. I struggle to accept them. I struggle to believe them. I struggle to understand them.

And here’s why I struggle.

Because I know God, and I love God with all my heart. Because I know that He is love and is the God of grace and mercy and forgiveness and justice beyond anything I can fathom.

And because I also know my family and I know my friends who don’t know God. And I love them with all my heart too.

And so I struggle, and I will continue to struggle.

But here is the question that I must ask myself, and I’m asking you. How are you struggling?

Are you struggling with the concept or the truth that…

“He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might.”

Or are you struggling to tell people that truth? To teach people that truth? To pray for people and to seek every opportunity to share that truth and the glorious hope of the gospel of Christ with them?

What good is it for me to struggle to understand and accept the truth of heaven and hell, which I truly believe, if I do not struggle all the more to tell people that truth?

I am sitting in Goddard Library with papers to write and exams to revise for. That’s ok, there is a place for papers and for exams. They are important. But let me remind you of something that I have forgotten too often over the last few years…they are not THAT important.

“He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might.”

I’m struggling with that truth. Today my prayer is that my struggle would lead somewhere.

Tags: Author: Dim Alldridge , equipping leaders for the church and society , student blogger , thoughtfully evangelical

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Thoughts on Growing Pains | Seminary Student Blogger

December 04, 2012

Kate Hightower

When I saw it on Hotpads.com, I couldn’t believe it. I knew it was a gamble trying to find something in Atlantic Beach, Florida. But sure enough, there it was. On the higher range of the budget my best friend Alyssa and I agreed was appropriate for two college kids, but within our budget none-the-less. It was a lone listing, nothing around it on the map of places I was searching frantically in after God dealt me a hand in Orlando that I almost couldn’t handle. I drove two hours north to see if it was real, to look at the inside to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. It was a beautiful little town home, tucked in about two miles north from the main drag in a community filled with mostly retirees and new families. The community property itself sat right on the ocean. I was stunned. It was as if He knew I would need a place to pace, to wrap my head around the unwelcome and unbidden storm that chased me there.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it, but Atlantic Beach comes second only to the incomparable Paris in my book. It’s lush, loamy and green beyond the cool of the sand dunes and the immense stretch of ocean. But beyond that, there’s a deep richness abiding steadily there beneath the beat of the waves. This timeless quality of the atmosphere filled my journals and jarred me with creativity. I would go to sleep at night with my windows open, listening to the roar of the waves and breathing in the remnants of a nearby cookout mixed with the Jasmine vines in full bloom.

This house quickly became my home. The kind of home feeling that sticks to your ribs. It became that for a lot of 20-somethings around the area; given that I had recently discovered a long-dormant love for cooking, we could always be counted upon for a day at the beach, dinner and a midnight hang out around a fire pit in the back with laughter, wine and S’mores abounding. I wasn’t blind to the romance in it. There is no other way I would have preferred spending my mid-twenties. It was those nights that I felt, in full, the vitality of my youth pounding in my veins.

After three years, though, we had to move. God moved us both onward, closer to the seminary, closer to work. I obeyed with a burdened heart. So burdened that Alyssa, myself, and our friends would frequent the private beach access up there long after we left as if it wasn’t over. Savoring the memories. Like it was still ours.

It was. Until that one morning I decided to take my dog down to the beach for a walk, and the private beach access gate was closed and boasting a shiny, new lock system with a combination one couldn’t begin to take a guess at. It ended there. It had ended in a flash, like a brilliant shooting star that had broken the gluey darkness with monumental, momentary glory. I stood there, watching the ocean on the other side, surrounded in darkness once more.

I turned then, loaded Stella back in the car, and made the long drive back to the apartment.

I couldn’t deny God here. The whole, “closes a door, opens a window” cliché seemed appropriate after facing the locked gate. He can always be counted upon for many things, but in this moment it was a staunch reminder of two in particular. One: He truly is the great Provider. Sometimes there are beautiful, splendid blessings. Blessings that come exactly as you need them, when you need them most. For me, that little house was a refuge in those formative years of your early-to-mid-twenties. I needed a place, right then, where I could shake my fist, kick my feet, praise, extol, cry and adore Him as I grew and experienced my life. His presence was palpable in that place. But there was a time when it had to end, which led me to my final thought. He always keeps us moving to remind us we are constantly capable of more than we think. The closed gate was an open door to the rest of the possibility in my life that I am too tiny and insignificant to pretend to comprehend.

While the holidays are the hardest time to be away from the little beach bungalow, it is undeniable in me how true He is to what He says. How He promises He sticks with us. How I have true proof that no matter how far away He felt sometimes, He never, ever left.

And as for any lingering homesickness or anxiety about the future, His shoulders are broad. His arms are outstretched. His fingers counting the time to the next step in His plan when He can show me more of His wonders again.

Tags: Author: Kate Hightower , student blogger , thoughtfully evangelical

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