Decision-Making Non-Answers
“To seminary, or not to seminary?” That’s the question for our newest Contributor, Katie Olmstead, as she navigates the ambiguities and nuances of that most frustrating of mysteries: the Will of God.
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Last February, the decision was made. Everything would change come August. I would leave my home in Phoenix for Philadelphia; continue to work for Food for the Hungry part-time remotely while going back to school. My cross-country road trip was charted, housing scouted out, mental shift made and farewell gifts purchased. I was ready for the adventure of a new city, new friends, classes, books, changing seasons, green and rain (so not the desert), wealth of history and arts to explore, another step towards my long-term dream….blah, blah, blah.
It is now October, the decision deferred for Spring maybe Fall. All my plans were unexpectedly postponed (or maybe canceled, ugh). Although convinced it was the right conclusion in light of changed circumstances, I am still filled with disappointment, anxiety and confusion; faced again with the decision of what is next. I catch myself daydreaming about avoiding it completely: driving my Rabbit, jumping on a plane or catching a train until I’ve explored every new interesting place and escaped this suffocating suburbia. Yet adventures offer no solution and I wake up to reality, decisions still far from clear. (more…)
thoughts.
We Welcome a New Contributor
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At the behest of Lady Monica Marusek I join your community of reformed hearts and revived minds. I am not a seminarian nor am I on my way to seminary, I join you as a fellow, lets say…redeemed worm. Whose end is that with all faculties: mind, heart, and soul and limbs alike, I may come to know, touch, taste and see, as grace allows, the depths of and implications of the good news. What I am is an artist, in a sense, more specifically a writer, so I confess, at first sight I believed this was a site for academia. Not as if there is a divorcing of the two, knowledge and art, but while perusing the archives of your former posts I found this posted by Paul, as he writes about the change of one’s state of being that is the basis of Reformed Theology,
But this has implications far beyond the theology of salvation. It means that Christians must have a passion that spills over from this change of being. It means that we must appeal to the whole man to increase their delight in God. It means this site must move from posts on the “Knowledge” of the Holy, to sweeping prose, poetry and musings. From deep theology that reveals who God is to soul-stirring poetry and meditations flowing from men and women forever impacted by their encounters with this revealed God.
..and my mind shouts Exactly!
This is what I have ascribed to, this is what then I will join you to do, to write prose and poetry that extols yet grapples with and stirs heart and mind for one end,
seeing Christ more clearly,
that he may be rightly treasured,
and duly glorified.
Pray it be done .
