Month: December 2015

First Semester Complete!

/ Jason Hyer / Leave a comment

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Wow, what a whirlwind the last 13 weeks have been. Final grades were posted last night, so I guess that means this first semester is in the books, and there is no going back. Let’s take some time to reflect on the lessons learned from this, my first semester in higher education.

First the stats:

  • 200+ = Pages written
  • 17 = Books read
  • 100’s = # of hours spent on assignments
  • 1000’s = # of hours of sleep lost
  • 3.9 = GPA

The statistics, while doing an excellent job of illuminating the challenges of the seminary (and I’d dare say any graduate school) experience, do not adequately portray the transformation that takes place in one’s mind. They certainly do not expose the deep personal lessons that were learned of one’s own “growth edges.” The numbers also don’t reveal the strengths one didn’t know they possessed, made known through the constructive feedback of learned professors.

I went off to seminary thinking I was going to be learning about God and wound up learning about myself. I expected I would go off to seminary and struggle to pass my classes, merely hoping to achieve minimum scores, and wound up thriving. I went off to seminary fearing my weaknesses only to have God turn them into strengths. I went off to seminary expecting to learn complicated theological and doctrinal concepts and wound up learning the proverbial “meaning of life”.

What lessons did I learn this first semester?

  • I learned a panoply of vocabulary words (panoply being one of them).
  • I learned that 6th-century Benedictine monks argued about silly things.
  • I learned that I have a love of writing and that my works are appreciated by others.
  • I learned that God loves me so immensely that he gave his Son to repair my relationship with him (and your’s as well).
  • I learned of evil.
  • I learned of righteousness.
  • I learned that God keeps his every promise.
  • I learned that I have a support network made up of friends, family, and partners that sacrifice for me, but more importantly, for God.
  • I learned that when God calls, you follow.
  • I learned that I do not have to think of the words, God will provide them.
  • I learned humility.
  • I learned to get out of the way and let God work through me.
  • I learned to recognize when I don’t do this.
  • I learned I needed accountability partners for the times when I’m not being humble when I’m not getting out of the way, and when I’m not recognizing this behavior.

I could go on and on with the list of revelations experienced within the classroom of my mind, but so many of the lessons are between God and I. Besides, it’s time for me to get back to my homework for the class that starts in just a few days.

In summary, I went to seminary expecting to learn complicated ideas about God and religion but instead learned the most basic of lessons…

God is Love.

 

7 Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. 9 God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.

13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world. 15 God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. 16 So we have known and believe the love that God has for us.

God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. 17 Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. 21 The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also. (1 John 4:7-21, NRSV)

Finals week is quickly approaching…

/ Jason Hyer / Leave a comment

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Wow.

It’s hard to believe that my first Finals Week is almost upon me. It seems like it was just a few weeks ago I was tackling my first assignments. For the past few days, I’ve been reflecting on the astonishing new revelations I’ve experienced over the last twelve weeks. I’ve learned many concepts and details about the love of Christ that were unfamiliar to me. But along with this new knowledge about God, I’ve also had manifestations of self-examination that reveal my strengths and weaknesses, or as we call them in seminary… growth edges.

I know I’ve spoken of this in the past, but if I was forced to use one word to describe seminary it would be “transformational.” Everyone I had spoken to who has attended used this word in describing the experience, now I see what they meant. The first twelve weeks have fundamentally transformed my relationships with God and the people I call friends and family. Because I am more fully coming to understand how freely God loves me, I can more effectively embody that in my love for others.

Preparations for finals week at the graduate level, from what I can see so far, differs from that of the undergrad system that my daughter Isabel is experiencing. I don’t have facts to memorize; I have papers to write. Long papers… very long papers. I’m finding that the length of the papers is the biggest challenge, but probably not in the way you imagine. If I have a paper that is required to be 9-12 pages my difficulty is not getting at least nine pages, it’s keeping the paper under 12 pages. I have so much that I want to say about God that I find it difficult to be bound by maximum page lengths. I remarked to one of my professors that I needed to write a book.

None of this transformation has been easy. When is radical change ever easy? There are two things that have lessened the difficulty found in this process. First and foremost is my God, through the work of the Holy Spirit, has given me intelligence I do not possess. He has given me wisdom I have never had. Jesus has provided to me patience and a work ethic for my classwork that has not been demonstrated in my life to this point (though I have preached it to my children for years).

The other “thing” that has assisted me is the love and support of my friends and family. The biggest earthly support I have received is from my wife, Jennifer. She has carried the brunt of our daily activities on her shoulders. She has patiently accepted my late night study sessions. She has cooked the food, cleaned the house, completed the grocery shopping, helped with homework, and kept me in clean clothes mostly on her own. In the past, we have shared these responsibilities more equitably. She has even tolerated my reading to her passages from both my textbooks and additional research I do “on the side” for fun (who could have imagined that?). This is what she had to put up with last night:

“To be sure, though postmodernism claims to offer an imporvement over modernistic readings of humanity, it nevertheless continues with the same kind of reductionism and methodological hegemony that marked the logical positivists of the early twentieth century (Schlick and Carnap among them) and the radical scientific empiricists later on who, like B.F. Skinner, maintained that a human being is merely a repertoire of behavior and is, therefore, utterly explicable in terms of science in general and the environment in particular.” (from The Theology of John Wesley: Holy Love and the Shape of Grace by Dr. Kenneth J. Collins)

Catch all that? Now you see why I have a quickly expanding list of new vocabulary words contained within a notebook in my pocket!

My daughters Isabel and Emma have been a huge help as well. Isabel is kind enough to proofread her dad’s papers, though not so kind that she doesn’t end up putting red ink all over them! I suspect she’s enjoying repaying my years of editing her work. Emma is always quick to provide a hug and words of encouragement to me. At random times, she will just walk up and wrap her arms around me, and it just makes me melt.

To expand on the second “thing,” I’d like to add that my friends and supporters have been phenomenal in their inquiries about my well-being. Your questions and concern about my workload and life are very humbling to me as well as uplifting in my spiritual growth.

Classes officially end on December 18th, but preparations have already begun. Some of the multi-part finals that are required have already been completed. This weekend I will be working on the remainder of the assignments with the goal of having them submitted early while also completing the normal weekly assignments.

It may all sound overwhelming, but it isn’t. I am more relaxed now than I have been throughout this entire endeavor. I know that I am loved by God, by my wife, my children, my family, and my friends.

With God, all things are possible. Without Jesus, I would still be wandering in the wilderness of the world.

“I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” (Philippians 4:13, NRSV)