cultivating diligence and permanence in a sound-bite world.
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| some of the girls going to pirate day at krispy kreme donuts |
We are now ending our 5th week of school, and students and staff are settling into the normal SBS rhythm of life, and by that I mean that everyone is now getting used to studying the Bible 8 hours a day...which is "unusual" in a more typical life circumstance to say the least!
If there's one thing I can say about a year at ESBS, it's A-typical. This program is a drastic departure from the rhythms of normal life in 21'st century America. In many ways what students enter into and experience here carries undertones of a monastic type of life that we've lost in our culture. Before the printing press, the i-pad, and the chevrolet, everything took time and lots of it. Scribes in the ancient eastern world, and monks in the western world would spend months meticulously pouring over books of the Bible as they copied them and re-copied them by hand.
Anyone who has done laundry knows that if you want a stain to stick forever, just leave it there a while. Let it set in. It's the same with truth, with the Bible, with discipleship. Lasting change requires time. You have to push away the noise and sit under truth for long enough to let it sink in...day after day, week after week, and slowly a permanent and lasting thing takes place.
I think our culture appreciates and even admires permanence and stability, but asks for it in a "microwave" kinda' way....saying things like... "I want to be changed forever, but I've only got 3 minutes to spend on it, because Im late for a lunch date across town...so hit me with something deep and true in 3 minutes or less and I promise I'll be different forever." It just doesn't work that way. Deep, permanent, lasting growth cant be downloaded into your heart like a song on an i-pod.
The parable of the sower and the seed (Luke 8) rings true. Jesus, in the parable, describes growth in organic terms. Like cultivating a crop, growth happens slowly, day after monotonous day, as the seed of truth is cared for and cultivated. Time...it takes time. The growth happens through the repetitive process of tilling the weeds and caring for the seed with "patient endurance (Luke 8:15)...time..."patient endurance"...difficult concepts to appreciate in a 1080p high speed culture.
So, among other things, Im realizing that this program teaches something valuable about life and discipleship...we are teaching patient endurance, which is a good thing, a necessary thing, and a pathway to real and lasting change. It's real discipleship and Im thankful to be a part of it, and Im thankful for your involvement and interest in it too!