RUINS AND RUBLES

I received a letter from a seminary president about his summer journey to Greece and Turkey.  He and a group visited the ancient sites of Laodicea, Sardis, and Ephesus among others.  He wrote well about the temples, the statues, and the ancient cities of the Greeks.  He made the point eloquently that the Christian churches in those early centuries huddled quietly in the shadows of such grand architecture.  And yet the apostles made their appeal to the believers that 'their God is God.'
  It was a beautiful phrase by this writer to culminate his story.  Then he asked for money to build large buildings, increase budgets to exceptional levels, and enable professors to travel in style.
  The irony here caused me to think of what would be worthy in a seminary.  I attended a seminary for a year.  What I remember most of all was the spirituality of the faculty.  But I don't think their sacred spirituality came from the buildings and budgets.
  When I was a boy, the older generation of saints were the church staff members.  They had lived before World War II, coming through the depression and a war which came remarkably close to world destruction.  I loved their rich, deep, kind spirituality.  At the time I thought their spirituality came from wisdom; now I know it came from what they had suffered and risked for God.  Their richness was in their losses.
  So I thought, what would be the best for the seminary students today?  There is a saying attributed to the great English poet John Milton.  The saying is, Epic poets drink from a wooden cup, lyric poets drink from a silver cup.  The seminary president is asking me to buy his students a silver cup, and I won't do it.  But what would be best?
  I think growing in grace and the knowledge of God comes from long spaces of time, Biblical languages, and prayer to the max.  It takes time to hear God; it takes silence and darkness in a room and listening.  A day without the radio, a day without food, a day without driving a car or speaking to anyone or turning on the air conditioning.  A night alone haunched amid ruins, a night sleeping alongside the Jordan, a weekend in the desert.
  It takes Biblical languages to transport a student into the times and place in which New Testament letters were written.  These letters were not written to close down every problem, but to open up God.  Learning the nuances of thought--that Paul refuses to accomodate the Jews in one chapter of Acts but then does accommodate them in a later chapter--so much is hidden in so few words that only comes out by reading Greek and Hebrew through the years.
  It's helpful to know the difference between what some other writer has in him and what you have in you.  When I was in college my specialty was Milton.  So years later I tried to write as he did, having spent many years absorbing the style, the vocabulary, the scansion of the man.  What I wrote was not in 5 beats, it didn't have his grand noble style, his learning, the thrill of his thought.  I had none of those things.  God had put in my what He put in me and all the hours I could muster did not enhance that by one sentence.  No one will ever write, Of Man's disobedience with such pointed conviction.
  And growing in grace to the point of being able to teach and preach to someone else does not come by test time.  There are so many thoughts to go through before arriving home.  There is so much of our culture to shed, so much of God to walk through.  A bigger student lounge won't do this, more meals in the cafeteria won't do this, more salary, more perks, more books won't do this.  Columns are not a cross.  The Christian life is time with God, the submission of the heart, the reception of His presence.  It is the praise of His glory.
  I hope that seminary stays afloat, not so much for the seminary but of those who will walk there for a time.