Thursday, June 18, 2015

Final blog post for SBS!


Hello everyone!
After almost nine months of learning how to study the Bible, we are coming to the close of our school this weekend.  As I look back and reflect on what this year has been I have been amazed at how much I have learned, but I have been even more astounded by how much I have yet to learn.  It’s really easy for us as humans to think we have everything figured out, I guess because we keep our perspective so narrow that we don’t leave room for things to simply be bigger than we are, but closing our eyes to the hugeness of God doesn’t make Him go away.  Through this school my perspective has changed; I’ve grown in my understanding of how big God is, I’ve seen how insufficient my own ability is in light of my weakness, and I’ve seen how God’s patience cloaks this world in all of its frailty.  I’ve processed a lot of information about history, cultures, scholarly opinion, and literature, and my natural human response is to think that I know something other people don’t know, or I’ve somehow found the “key” to the Bible that hundreds of years of study have not unveiled to anyone else.  This is so deceptive because God has laid His truth bare and naked before humanity from the moment He said “Let there be light!”  He made it accessible to everyone, regardless of how much they know or what their experience may be.  This is so humbling because it means that no matter how much I study there will always be more things I don’t know, but at the same time I could not study at all and have all the knowledge I need for a full and complete existence by simply saying yes to Jesus.  That’s the beauty of the gospel; Jesus makes fullness accessible in a moment by accepting His sacrifice, but the process of learning to live out that fullness takes an eternity. 
There is so much I could say about what I’ve learned from the books in the New Testament, like how my identity was rocked by Ephesians, Hebrews showed me why I can have faith in God, John showed me the sweet tangibility of Jesus’ humanness and understanding for my weakness, and Revelation blew my mind with how incredibly in control God is and how good His plan is for His people; however, that would take much too long to elaborate on here so if you want to hear more about it I will be home in a week and you can message me and we can meet up.  Overall I think I am simply in awe of how available God makes Himself to us, and the Bible is proof of His care because He wanted to make sure that we knew who He was and how much He loves His precious creation.  I’m so thankful for this opportunity I’ve had to go through the whole Bible this year, and I’m extremely thankful for all of the support of my family and friends; thank you so much for walking through this journey with meJ

Can’t wait to be home again!


Love, Aubrey