(xaris and shalom)

Rooms ice cold with air conditioning and long summer days. Hours of conversations, listening, sharing life experiences -- the good, the painful, ways God has worked through all of them.  (Both old and new friends who give me a safe space to verbally process through, literally, hours worth of thoughts and feelings.) Praying with and for each other.  Debriefing as we share stories, frustrations, hopes. Studying and interpreting the Word together. Solemn ceremonies, honoring graduates, praising the Father for His work in the past and looking to the future. Research and passions coming together with resources to equip us; the haven of a retreat and time to think; the pressure of time being short before we all scatter back out to our various countries and jobs. Going out to eat, watch a movie, walk around Chicago, take pictures.  Car rides together complete with paper cuts and more inside jokes than any of us will remember come morning. Wrestling with se

The last couple of weeks have been a whirlwind; we have classes for about 5.5 hours each day and then homework, readings, and assignments to work on (along with eating and sleeping and actually talking to each other, you know.)  It's simultaneously exhausting and exhilarating.  There is not much that compares to the joy that I feel in being part of a group of very diverse people, from a broad spectrum of backgrounds, who are unified in their passion.  Today, as I prepare to take a final for one class and wrap up the project for another, as I think about the delight that I experience in being around my classmates and teachers, as we all prepare to scatter back to our countries of service in the next few weeks, as we grieve at the devastation in France and the state of perpetual half-mast that the world's been in, the words of Gene Helsel's song Boldly Go  came to mind. At the right hand of the Father, enthroned in majesty Sits the perfect Son of Man and Son of God A