In Celebration of Graduation!

Graduation was 2 months ago, so this blog post is overdue, but sufficient to say, I graduated with a Bachelors of Arts in Advanced Biblical Studies.  They actually gave me the paper and let me out without a heresy trial (!!!).  This post is for all my blogging friends (ahem, Liz and Leah:) who have this idea that blog posts must always be accompanied with pictures, which I fail at dreadfully.  However, my friends Clara and Melinda photographically documented the events, so there are plenty of pictures to share.  The celebrations began when Clara and Jemima, Jenna, and Liz visited the weekend before as a pre-graduation treat.  As you can see from the pictures, the dorm became a place of high entertainment...

The week consisted of frantically finishing up Greek exegeticals, learning Mail Merge for a random computer class, enjoying Voltron-Kara-Jenna-Joel-Paul-Liz-Celeste-Bekah-Clara chill time in the cafeteria, supper at Steak-and Shake, running around the Plaza at night, invading Barns and Noble, and consuming a significant amount of coffee.

Several days later, Melinda flew in and joined the group for many adventures, one of which consisted of a pilgrimage to a library.  The library trip had a number of sub-adventures, including the stone structure overlooking Hwy 670, the river, the train tracks, and the airport.  Another sub-adventures was a small theater inside a vault complete with red velvet curtains and a large round door.  Upon reaching the roof of the library, we finished off with a chess game with life-size chess pieces.  We attempted to take creepy stalker pictures on Melinda's camera while she was away, but she returned and we barely had time to look innocent...:)  On Sunday evening we escaped campus between tornado warnings to go eat Indian food.  If you have never experienced 20+ people all enjoying Indian food together, you should arrange to experience it.  Oh, and the food tastes better if you eat it with your fingers!

Graduation was a very exciting day in the life of Celeste Mamie Franklin...not like I had been working towards it for five years or anything.

The two female traditional BAs

Rebekah and her aunt also graduated.

 The time with Melinda wasn't long enough...

Free, happy graduates partying!

Most of the CBI peeps...all looking quite typical.  

The Lord was good, and graduation was just one more expression of that.  There were several times when I wasn't sure if I would get that little piece of paper, and I thank God often for the strength and wisdom He gave to complete the coursework.  SDG

Shakespeare and Satisfaction

Last weekend, I attended a free production of a Shakespeare play held outdoors.  A big group of friends went, and there are few things in the world so comfortable and happy as spending time with good friends.  Two productions were running: A Midsummer Night's Dream and Antony and Cleopatra.  Not being a big tragedy fan, I planned on seeing Midsummer.  However, the organized side of my personality was pre-occupied with Hebrew and didn't check which show was running that night.  The result was that when we arrived at the park, Antony and Cleopatra was running. 


It was an entertaining show - quite funny on many levels.  I couldn't endorse it and probably won't see it again because it was quite a bit more descriptive than necessary (one of those times when it's not edifying to be familiar with Elizabethan English!).  But the value of seeing it was that it highighted the world's best.  Theater is a high form of art.  Antony and Cleopatra is great literature.  Shakespeare is considered to be the finest expression of love in the English languages.  But after the play, I thought, "Is this it?  Did I really just  spend 2.5 hours watching the highest form of English culture?"  Don't get me wrong, I had a wonderful time and hope to see the next Shakespeare production, but the whole thing had a hollow feeling about it.


Part of the reaction probably comes from not studying Shakespeare, but part of the reaction is similar to Solomon's in Ecclesiastes 2:4-11:

"I made great works. I built houses and planted vineyards for myself.  I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees.  I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees.  I bought male and female slaves, and had slaves who were born in my house. I had also great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any who had been before me in Jerusalem.  I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces. I got singers, both men and women, and many concubines, the delight of the children of man.  So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem. Also my wisdom remained with me.  And whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil.  Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun."

Solomon recognized that the world's best did not satisfy.  Trying to find satisfaction in landscaping, livestock, wealth, art, relationships, and Shakespeare is empty.  The world's best does not satisfy us because God did not make us to be satisfied by it.  God created man for fellowship with Himself, and nothing less than that will satisfy him.  Man's problem is that he looks for satisfaction in things and people instead of God.


C. S. Lewis wrote in "The Weight of Glory":

"...If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak.  We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.  We are far too easily pleased."

When a person has been united with Christ in a saving relationship with God, he is satisfied in that relationship.  Then, he may enjoy the things that Solomon and Lewis mention because he is first satisfied in God.

More Philly Hall Adventures!

Since my last post about apartment life, several random things have happened, and it's high time for another series of snapshots.  All these tidbits have to do with appliances of various sorts and sizes.

1. The Stove.  I was sitting in a chair minding my own business after church one evening.  Lelia and Emily (my roommates) were moving stuff our to the car and had left the door open.  Suddenly, I looked up to find the manager of Philly Hall in my living room.  (This is not the usual place to find the Philly manager!)  He and his wife came the rest of the way into the house and informed us that our gas stove was leaking and we needed to move out of the apartment immediately.  (It was nearly eleven o'clock at night.)  They seemed quite concerned about us, called maintenance, and unlocked another apartment for us to move into.  Maintenance turned off all the gas to the stove, opened the windows, and told us that we could stay in the apartment providing that we aired it out.  One difficulty was that we had no way to cook food.  Fortunately, there were enough carrots and oatmeal in the house to sustain life...  The other difficulty was that in the scuffle, the folder with my Hebrew homework got lost and didn't turn up for a week.  It was hiding under a couch cushion...:)

2. The Air Conditioner.  Living on the second floor can be quite warm during the summertime.  Our apartment was short one air conditioner, and it was getting pretty miserable.  After chasing several rabbit trails that were supposed to lead to air conditioners, Lelia and I made a trek to the basement ourselves, braved potential spiders, selected the air conditioning unit closest to the door, and carried it up two flights of stairs to its new home.  Once safely in our apartment, we commenced the delicate task of inserting it into the window.  After several adjustments, the unit was finally fitted into the window, but, alas, the window would not seal properly.  So we kept trying, filling our heads with grand illusions of our home improvement skills.  Finally, the great moment came: we turned the unit on.  And nothing happened.  So we pushed some buttons.  And nothing happened.  So we turned some knobs.  And still nothing happened.  So Lelia cleaned the filter.  We did eventually get air conditioning, but not until our friends Phil and Paul dismantled the unit, pronounced it dead (maybe that's why it had been sitting closest to the door), and brought us a new one from the basement.  Now, the apartment is a cool retreat from the warm outdoors (when I remember to turn it on when I leave for work).

3.  The Stereo.  The stereo system that I'm babysitting for Isaac over the summer has suddenly decided to play the radio instead of whatever music is on my computer.  I decided not to fight with it...

This post may seem a bit dismal, but cheer up!  The one thing I have been successful at is washing the large pile of dishes in the sink!

Simple Answers

A good way to apply a theological question down to real life is to teach a pre-readers' Sunday School class.  My class at The Master's Community Church (themcc.org) is full of little people who have a great deal of energy, love to tell about all the things God made, and are learning how God keeps His promises to His people (amazingly, the exact same thing their teacher is learning!).  The class has put feet on a number of questions that have been in my mind for some time.

1) How do you teach Old Testament Bible stories of God's just punishment for sin and reward for faith without implanting a performance-based mentality in a child's mind?  This past week, the Bible lessons was from Numbers 21:4-9, the story of the Brazen Serpent.  Over the past several weeks we've been looking at the wilderness wanderings and noting how God blesses belief and disciplines unbelief.  On Sunday, I explained to the children that there was nothing magical about the snake on the pole; it was believing in God's promise that healed Israelites.  Someone asked if a person would be healed if he believed God but didn't look at the snake.  And here we were back at the performance vs. faith question.

2) How do you teach an Old Testament passage that the New Testament expands on?  Should you stick to the OT text or highlight the NT explanation of the OT passage?  The Brazen Serpent's significance is highlighted by Christ's reference to it in John 3:14-15: "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life."  All the big questions of the New Testament's use of the Old Testament rushed into my mind.  Should I bring in the NT or stick to the OT?  If Christ used the Bronze Serpent as a picture of Himself, wouldn't it be doing the story injustice to leave out Christ's use of it?

3) What about passages whose meaning is dependent on your theological paradigm?  Upon further investigation, I discovered this was one of those passages.  What did Christ mean when He said that He would be "lifted up"?  Was it a reference to the Cross (John 8:28, 12:32-34), or was it also a reference to His glorification (Isaiah 6:1, 52:13).  There was a neat string of theology behind both views, and I wasn't ready to pick a position.

In the end, all three questions had much simpler answers than I was prepared for.  1) Someone who believed God's promises would look at the snake.  A person who believes God's promises obeys His commands.  2) Since Jesus used the Bronze Serpent to picture Himself, we should use the same picture when we teach the story.  3) Since John would have been familiar with Isaiah's use of "lifted up," it's possible that his use of the term included the Messiah's glorification from Isaiah.

The purpose of this post is not to say that these questions are not legitimately difficult or that I've found amazing answers to them, but that when it comes right down to explaining to pre-readers what the Bible means, the answers are amazingly simple.  Through prayer, submission to the Holy Spirit, and exegesis it is possible to know what Scripture means by what it says.

Creation, Light, and Re-Creation

Here is a beautiful theme in Scripture that I ran into yesterday while studying Christ's kingship.  It reminded me of God's creative use of word pictures to communicate something that is bigger than words.  The following paragraph came from a fat book of theology, so pardon the author's long sentences and enjoy the his content:)

Arise, shine, for you light has come,

And the glory of the LORD has risen upon  you.

For behold, darkness will cover the earth,

And deep darkness the peoples;

But the LORD will rise upon you,

And His glory will appear upon you.

Nations will come to your light,

And kings to the brightness of your rising.

Isaiah 60:1-3

"...Why is light underscored in Isaiah?  ...  The reference that "darkness will cover the earth, and deep darkness the peoples," likely alludes to Gen. 1:2-4: "And darkness was over the surface of the deep....Then God said 'Let there be light'; and there was light.  And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness."  Isaiah 60:1-3 is depicting the coming restoration and redemption of Israel [New Covenant salvation, ed.] against the background of Gen. 1:2-4.  The reason for doing this is that Isaiah understands the future blessing on Israel and the world to be a recapitulation of the first creation, so that Israel's and the nations' salvation is painted as a new creation and emergence from spiritual darkness.  The same notion of new-creational light presumably is also in the mind of the NT allusions to these Isaiah verses.  The idea of new creation is conveyed in the NT uses is also indicated by Paul's statement in 2 Cor. 4:6: "For God, who said, 'Light shall shine out of darkness,' is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.""

- "Resurrection as New Creation and Kingdom in the Gospels and Acts" from 

A New Testament Biblical Theology by G. K. Beale