My electronic devices all inform me that this is October. I find this hard to believe as it feels as though only yesterday I started another year at Best Place on Earth University. Since my last post, I am no longer homeless *touchdown dance* and am having lots of fun learning to be domestic. Future husband, whoever you are, you owe housing a big hug for arranging that I practice all these skills before you get here. So far I have successfully fixed a toilet, prepared meals, and squished all the spiders that my vegetarian roommate wasn’t around to rescue.
In the meantime, I find that the further I get into my degree plan, the more interesting my subjects become. Who knew I could study things I actually care about? A surprising course this semester has been World Literature. I am aware that this sounds like one of the most painfully boring classes a person might be unlucky enough to take, and for a while it lived up to that entirely. My notebook contains more pictures than anything useful. For example, this is what I know about the Epic of Gilgamesh:
In the midst of such excruciating boredom, some things started to get my attention. All of these stories, works that are considered essential to any educated person’s repertoire, have something peculiar in common. They all have some element similar to the Bible. The Epic of Gilgamesh has a flood story; Plato’s The Apology sounds incredibly similar to how Peter and John answer the Sanhedrin in Acts 4; The Aneied mentions an event when the primarily male city of Rome attacks the Sabines to carry off women as their brides. This parallels the Judges 21 story of the tribe of Benjamin snatching up wives out of a vineyard. These are just a few shallow examples. I’m sure that people have made lifelong studies of the similarities between the Bible and the world’s major literature.
I find that this can be a little disconcerting. Was the Bible…cheating? Is the author of the universe a plagiarist? It only took a moment before the pimp hand of faith dealt with that. If anything, these similarities only validate the truth of the Bible. Romans tells us that the truth is written on man’s heart, whether he acknowledges it or not. Anything valuable, anything worth reading gets ideas from the best source: the truth. In the beginning was the Word. Was, is, will be. How beautiful that our God is a skilled wordsmith. How empowering that the words of our God endure forever. How interesting that the truth of our God shows up wherever we find man looking for something worthwhile.
Classes are certainly not the main reason I go to college. In fact, I think college would be much easier without classes. I’m having a hard time convincing administration of this idea. Either way, campus activities are terrific ways to avoid homework and make friends. I get pretty excited when Wayland students do things like this: I Am Second WBU. I look forward to more videos and more stories, all different but all the same. One redeemer, lots of redeemed. I think it’s fantastic. But I’m having some trouble. You see my thought when I watched was what my own I Am Second might look like. Of course I have a testimony. There was BC and now we’re rocking AD with JC. What God did for me is beautiful and real and worth sharing. But it’s…fuzzy. God has been consistently good, I have been consistently pathetic. I have grown and served and been blessed but all along I’ve failed and stumbled and strayed. What’s the theme of my Christ story? Which parts are clear and relatable? How do I deal with times when I’m not sure where I am or what God is doing? Times like…now.
I don’t have an answer. I don’t have the answer to a lot of things. But I know this:
I write, but I know The Writer. My name is Katie Jo and I am second.
