Adjusting to College Life

I've been in Saskatchewan for roughly three weeks. I've also been too busy to really reflect on that. I could only guess at how many new people I've met, but I'd surely miss the mark. Honestly, I couldn't even estimate how many I've actually had conversations with and which ones I could pick out of a police lineup. The truth is, life has happened really fast since I landed in Regina.

I started this blog because I believe there is a value in jotting down the things God does for me. I was motivated after prepping a sermon on Psalm 77, which I realize I had promised to post here at some point. I think it's stuck on my desktop at home, so that will have to wait until I can get back to Nova Scotia. But the point is, more than sharing my study notes, to ensure that God is praised for what He does. One of my key points was how one of our functions as believers is to glorify Him. If God is glorified in how He blesses us, we are thieves for not sharing those blessings with others. I also think this edifies the body and increases the faith of our brothers and sisters, enabling us to pray with confidence in knowing just how many prayers He answers. (Seriously, it's staggering if you stop to take note of it.) But I've been pretty neglectful of this little site.

If I can be so bold, He's done way more in the last three weeks than I could ever articulate here. He does that every day, and we don't even fully understand how much His grace sustains us, so I choose not to preoccupy myself with such endless rabbit trails. Practically speaking, however, most things have some very visible components to them, and our internal feelings of awe and wonder can also be rendered into language. So in one sense, I have no excuse. But I come back to my earlier statement: this has been a lightning pace. And I've struggled to keep up with it.

As someone mentioned to me earlier, some of the best moments are the impromptu conversations or spontaneous coffee meetings. That has been the case. This is such a vibrant community of believers and I have tried to soak in as much as I could justify. I have noticed that God has made it nigh impossible for me to concentrate on work at times because He wanted to teach me less academic but more practical lessons in life. And I have also been tested and stretched in ways I can't explain. Some of the feelings that have trickled through me have been painful, exhilarating, bizarre, uncomfortable, sickening, frustrating, disturbing, and so on. The whole gamut, really. And there seems to be no hint at this stuff stabilizing at any time. It would seem that there is no scheduled season of normalcy that will be defined by routine academic studies. The very nature of this place precludes that kind of thing. But this doesn't absolve me of having to keep ahead of my weekly readings and squeeze in a crop of assignments that looms ahead. I have no idea how it will all be accomplished.

Not at all.

Tonight I did up a few templates in MS Word that will hopefully save some time when I need to format my research papers and essays. I also met with my new senior pastor, Wade, who is just a brilliant and inspiring shepherd. I just know the Lord has orchestrated a lot of the things that have seemed pretty incidental from my limited perspective. But yeah, I am really getting buried in this stuff. I don't know where to begin singing God's praises with this entry, and I am inclined to regard that as a praise note in itself. God is really shattering the James that applied to Briercrest in the spring. Every day, it seems like He plunges His physician fingers into my being and tinkers with something. These are always enlightening little surgeries, but they seldom are pleasant. And it's those moments of relief and rejoicing that I tend to write most about. So let this post also be a break from that motif. A few months ago, I thought I was enrolling here to work toward a degree and to learn some valuable life lessons. The actuality is that I am here to be discipled and to disciple and through that process God will give me a degree anyway. But it's secondary.

I have noticed that God seems to go out of His way to ensure I drop any facade or fantasy about scoring perfectly on everything. There was a time I needed to print something for an assignment, but the library was booked until my class. Another time, I misread the format guide and was docked points for it. In other words, I am to have reasonable expectations here. Last night, I fellowshipped with someone in my dorm instead of doing an hour's worth of studying. God seemed content with my priorities. In truth, it didn't cost me everything, but that wasn't apparent at the time.

So yeah, I've managed to write a lot but hardly say anything. That's okay, though. If I am truly here to learn, He should do most of the talking anyway.