:: M squared T ::

:: Sunday, November 30, 2003 ::

1 Advent, Year C

In Advent,
We remember the prophecies pointing to the incarnation of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the one promised.

Yet that is not all.

We look forward in hope to his second Advent, when Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, will return as he promised.

Thus,

Advent is a time of anticipation of meeting our Lord face to face. It is a time of remembrance and hope, a time of preparation for God to set things right.

Let us, then, join Christians throughout history and celebrate Advent as a penitential season, setting our hearts right to meet our coming King.

The peace of the Lord be wtih you all.

:: Matt 11/30/2003 01:11:00 AM :: permalink :: comments (0) ::
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A lot of reading

I have three 20-page papers to do for 1 Dec 2003, one for each class.

1. Ecclesiology in context: I have been reading all the church fathers' statements on the church as collected in the Ante-Nicene Fathers & Nicene & Post-Nicene Fathers (series 1 and 2). This has now spilled over into the medieval writers (namely Aquinas) and the Reformers (Calvin is dense, by the way). Contemporary ecclesiologies (Ziziolas, Rahner, Kung, Volf, Newbigin, etc.) will be incorporated as well. All of this to address the contemporary distinctions and questions regarding what (and who) the church is.

2. Discipling and Mentoring: In 20 pages, analyze your church context for disciple-making deficit and propose solutions to that deficit. After you have presented this to your professor, present this to your church leaders and hope they take it well.

3. Galatians Exegesis: Write an exegetical paper on Galatians 1:6 - 11. In other words, say as much as you can about Galatians in 20 pages.

:: Matt 11/21/2003 10:00:00 AM :: permalink :: comments (0) ::
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Latest Ministry Event

We had a wonderful time this weekend with the Service Ministry Teams. One of our ministry partners had to call and cancel our time with them this weekend, so M Squared T had to come up with another opportunity so as not to loose our team's enthusiasm.

We ended up working around the UBC building - with a crew of 8. There were four rooms that had been filled with junk left since the dark ages. Most of that junk needed to go. Moreover, there was a wall in there that had nasty, peeling paint and mold growing on it. We set a crew to scraping that down in preparation for painting. The end result was stunning - space, once unusable, was now available as a ministry resource for the Baptist Student Foundation's mission to the University of Illinois Community.

Thanks be to God!

As a part of our work, I had the crew reflect on what we were doing, trying to help them draw connections between the work we were doing and their Christian lives. I am pleased by the level of growth I am seeing among the crew this year. I pray for even more possibilities in the future!

:: Matt 11/18/2003 01:40:00 PM :: permalink :: comments (0) ::
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Perseus Mirror

A new mirror has been made of the Perseus Site. At least for those of us in the midwest, it's a lot faster.

About Perseus:

Perseus is an evolving digital library, engineering interactions through time, space, and language. Our primary goal is to bring a wide range of source materials to as large an audience as possible. We anticipate that greater accessibility to the sources for the study of the humanities will strengthen the quality of questions, lead to new avenues of research, and connect more people through the connection of ideas.

I use Perseus for my research in the Classics and Late Antiquity. Perseus contains many tools for Classicists, search tools for the standard Classical Greek and Latin Lexica, and morphological links embedded within texts. Now, if only the TLG were fully online to complement it!

:: Matt 11/13/2003 11:26:00 PM :: permalink :: comments (0) ::
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Now THIS is a sign of our rediculous times

Babies named after... cars?

Link via Post-Modern Pilgrim.

:: Matt 11/13/2003 05:56:00 PM :: permalink :: comments (0) ::
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Leaf-Raking and the Presence of God

One of the questions I always ask people who go with me on Service opportunities is, "How did you see Jesus today?"

Saturday, our group raked leaves at a property owned by Restoration Urban Ministries (RUM). RUM is a church in Champaign-Urbana that ministers to the needs of the homeless in our community of 110 000. Some are homeless because of bad financial situations. Some are transitioning from prison back to regular life. Some are fleeing domestic violence. Many come, just needing a place to stay.

RUM helps people with their spiritual needs as well as their need for housing, and helps them find jobs and build financial skills as well.

So I asked my fellow workers: how did leaf-raking (something that could be done by anyone whatever their religious affiliation or commitment) become Christian Ministry?

The conversation was quite striking. We did this work as the body of Christ in Christ's name for those strangers who are to be as Christ to us as we assisted our brothers and sisters in Christ at RUM.

Sure, anyone can rake leaves. What made this event explicitly Christian was 1) our attitude and perspective (we are doing this for Christ) and 2) our intentional reflection on how we could draw out (exegete) spiritual truths from the experience that would help us be formed in Christ.

Is there anything we might be forgetting?

:: Matt 11/11/2003 07:14:00 PM :: permalink :: comments (0) ::
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Swamped

Yeah... too much schoolwork.

Yeah... too much other stuff.

Need prayer.

:: Matt 11/04/2003 10:28:00 PM :: permalink :: comments (0) ::
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