Friday, February 24, 2012

40/40 Thematic Orchestration

I am continually amazed at how God plans things that I seem to simply fall into.  It is as if He orchestrates themes in my life on a weekly and even daily basis.  This week is a prime example of this thematic orchestration.

The student ministry group on Widener University which is called LOGOS has been growing steadily over the past two years.  Our original group began meeting on Tuesday nights.  This remains our largest meeting and collection of students.  However there are several students who cannot come to our Tuesday night meeting due to classes or travel time for commuter students who had to take public transportation which involved 2 hours, 3 buses, a train and several miles of walking distance simply in the attempt to not be late for classes, or the student who have overburdened themselves to the point that they have about 6 hours of free time to spend on personal pursuits (that is of course if they don't like to sleep and can handle being driven by pure caffeine and adrenaline.) In order to accommodate those students we expanded the meetings to include an additional Bible study that meets on Thursdays at and around lunch time.  We call these Brown Bag meetings. To further set up the scenario, last semester we were doing the same book of the Bible (Ephesians(not important that you knew which book.  it is irrelevant in this story, but I'd thought I'd throw it in there anyway))  in both groups.

This semester things worked out a little differently.  Only one student could attend the Brown Bag sessions so I decided to try doing two different books of the Bible.  On Tuesday nights we are working through the book of James.   We are taking it several verses at a time and just working out what it is talking about and what is being said in each section.  In the Brown Bag session the student and I are independently reading the book of Acts in chunks of 3 chapters at a time.  The plan is to be finished with both books by the end of the semester.  (not necessarily fun doing 2 book studies at the same time, but hey it happens)  Are you ready for the cool part. KEEP READING

Here is where God worked his Thematic Orchestration:

James Chapter 2:
1 My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. 2 For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, 3 and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, “You sit here in a good place,” while you say to the poor man, “You stand over there,” or, “Sit down at my feet,” 4 have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? 5 Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him? 6 But you have dishonored the poor man. Are not the rich the ones who oppress you, and the ones who drag you into court?7 Are they not the ones who blaspheme the honorable name by which you were called?

These are the verses that we spent a majority of our time working through at LOGOS. We spent a lot of time discussing the need to not show favoritism to people because we deem one group of people more worthy than another. We expanded the ideals beyond rich and poor to topics of class, race, or whatever could be used to set one person above another. At Brown Bag we read the story of Peter and Cornelius in Acts chapter 10-11. There Peter had to look beyond the exterior division of Jew and Gentile into the heart of the individuals. The people were amazed that the Holy Spirit was now available to Gentiles.

As I said doing two book studies simultaneously is not fun, but it is amazing when God makes it easier by bringing me to a similar theme in both. It's almost like He knows what He's doing and lets us stumble upon it at just the right time.

Shalom

Hair (the Theolobster)

No comments:

Post a Comment