One Day at Seminary...

Yesterday reminded me of all the things that are good about being here at seminary (well, several of them at least).

I woke up in the morning, and we had two inches of snow! It almost felt like home, except that snow has this weird effect on Southerners where they all slow down on the road. Strange.

I hiked across campus, steaming tea in my hand and a song in my heart (just kidding, it was morning and I was barely awake. But I appreciated it later). I went down into the basement -which I like to call The Bowels- of the seminary for greek class. I managed to make it through that, then it was off to chapel.

Chapel here is terrific. First of all, the place is BIG, so even hymns that are normally dumpy in church because nobody can reach the notes sound awesome at SBTS. Also, they have all kinds of great instruments and special music pieces, because SBTS has a renowned music school.

To top all this off, the chapel has a massive organ that they use for all the hymns. Every time we sing a hymn, we go through the first few verses. Just before we sing the last verse, though, we have what my friend Daniel and I call, "The Windup." We all pause from the flow of the song while the organist plays a grandoise intro. Fun stuff! When I first came I thought I would feel like they're being pretentious, but it really does give you a powerful sense of worshipping God with all your might.

Also, of course, the preaching is excellent. The simultaneous commitment of the school to solid preaching (in chapel) and yet still promoting excellent scholarship (through inviting people of various backgrounds to lecture) is a terrific environment to learn in.

As icing on the cake of my good day, I saw this guy who I was sure I'd seen before... somewhere. I couldn't place him at first, but then I realized that I'd seen him leading a URC college group meeting when I was a freshman in college! I remembered them mentioning at SCF that he was going to seminary... could this have been the one?

The last time I saw someone I thought I recognized (Tigers first baseman Chris Shelton...or not) I was dead wrong and felt like an idiot. Still, I decided to go up and say hello. And sure enough, it was him! Not only that, for some reason God caused me to remember his name (Jim Rarik) from all those years ago (6, by my count!). For anyone who knows me, this is a real miracle. Jim was extremely gracious, and I'm excited to sit down and chat with him at some point in the future.

Oh! I also had my first quiz last night, which I did well on, and I have my first greek quiz this morning. Thankfully, God blessed me with plenty of time and will to study! Again, a miracle.

So, I'm off. Hope you enjoyed hearing about my good day... I'll probably post about some bad ones once Greek vocab starts to kick in. See you soon!