The First Week

Hello and greetings in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. This week is the first week in the new year when I begin my three post strategy.  Last week was the first week back to classes, and between classes, work, homework, and my friends being excited to hang out again I had zero time and even came up a little short on sleep.  However this last weekend was a blast and now this week I am back to my normal routine of classes, work, homework, and then making time for devotions, reading, and this blog.
This weekend we went to our friend Adam's parents' house.  They live in Festus, MO which is only about forty-five minutes from here.  They fed us supper, we played some board games and a very cheap, friendly game of poker, and then sat around a bonfire.  It was a great night enjoyed with dear friends.  Then Saturday we watched a movie and played another board game before heading back to the seminary.
Sunday was a great day.  I went to church but didn't have to help with anything.  I found out, once I am done with worship this quarter, I will have the chance to lead liturgy three or four times before summer break.  I will be taking Homiletics next quarter, and pastor said I could have preaching opportunities this year yet towards the end of the spring quarter.  It is weird to think I will only be three quarters into my seminary career and will already be leading liturgy and preaching in front of a congregation.
The weather has been unusually warm and sunny this last week, and today was another beautiful day.  I could seriously use some snow, but can never complain about a beautiful sunny day given as a gift from our God.  I spent today in my dorm room cranking out homework, a practice sermon just for fun, and this post; however, I am sitting at my desk next to my window with the window open letting the cool breeze in.  My window is on the south side of the dorm so the warm sunlight beats in through my window and really warms the place up, so the cool breeze is actually a good thing.  I have two exciting things to mention and then I will get to my thoughts for the day.  The first exiting thing is that I have my worship demonstration Wednesday.  This is when we go through Divine Service Setting One including Communion (Just practice-no actual elements) in front of our peers and professor.  My friend Stein and I have been practicing together the past few nights, and it has been a blast actually going through the service.  The second exciting thing is that I found a guy at the seminary who was the perfect size.  I had brought Grandpa's albs back with me after the funeral.  An alb is the white robs pastors wear for those of you who do not know.  Anyways, this guy was the perfect size to fit into Grandpa's albs so I gave them to him for free.  He gets two free albs, and I get to know they are in great hands still being used.  He speaks fluent Spanish and his passion is Spanish ministry including missionary work across the border.  This to me was pretty neat since Grandpa spent so much of his life doing missionary work.  I also thought it was cool, he asked to hear all about Grandpa since he was getting his alb.  I think I may have talked his ear off, but as you know from my last post I like to brag about my Grandpa, he was a very special man.
My thought for the day comes from Hermeneutics last Thursday.  We use terms like "father" to describe God.  We use terms like Christ the "bridegroom" and the church is His "bride".  All of these terms are relationships we have with God.  We use the terms from relationships we have in our everyday life to describe our relationship with God.  However, is it not a little weird that we are able to use so many relationships we have with other humans to describe our relationship we have with our God?  Dr. Oschwald proposed the idea I want to tell you because I really like it.  Would it make more sense to say that God intentionally designed our relationships we have with other people in a way that allows us to better understand how our relationship with Him works than to say we just apply our human relationships to God?  It hit me like a brick wall simply because I had never thought if it that way.  God let us have man and woman who fall in love and get married and the husband is head of the house who provides for his family and would gladly give up his own life to protect his wife and family. Just as Christ loves us so much He provided for us and saved us by giving up His own life on the cross.  And God designed the father to be a man who loves His kids who is literally his offspring, teaches them, protects them, and takes care of them.  Just as God the Father who created us making us His offspring and His children, He protects us, provides for us, and takes care of us even sending His Son to be our bridegroom and Savior.  We can use relationships we have in our lives to know God better because that is how God wanted us to know Him.  He wanted us to know Him as our Father, our Savior, and our Bridegroom.  So He gave us these relationships to help us be closer to Him.  All Praise be to Him who makes Himself known to us through everyday relationships.
LSB Prayer 175
Merciful Father, through Holy Baptism You called us to be Your own possession.  Grant that our lives may evidence the working of Your Holy Spirit in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, according to the image of Your only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ our Savior.  Amen.