What you have at the end of the day

What I particularly like about living in Colombia is the weather. It can rain buckets, but everyday the sun shines and its short sleeved shirts. I can understand why Spurgeon disappeared for months to the south of France to recover from gout.

I also like the positive psychology of its citizens. Always look on the bright side is their way of thinking. They've had 45 years of guerrilla war with drug barons carving up the land yet people are convinced it's a great county, if not the best.

But these things would not keep us here. It's that sense of divine call which separates us from our family. But the cost of separation isn't as bad as it sounds. God gives you a new family: in a unique providence one of Olwen's closest Colombian friends was born on exactly the same day as our Elizabeth. The distance also draws us closer to our own family, and Skype's free video link makes seeing them everyday a reality.

That same divine call keeps active. Sadly the Seminary expelled two students this week: one for repeated plagiarism and I don't know what the other did, but it was pretty serious. Then faced with 56 essays to mark it can make you feel like going on a long holiday. But we're not here for the sun nor the cheap steaks.

And at the end of the day you still have a smile on your face.



Photo: A red squirrel eating a mango stone at our feet. Life's interesting in Colombia.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A wonky couple of days

Only two weeks to go before semester finishes. Students are pretty stressed out. They cheered on Friday when class finished. Had a visit last night from an ex-evangelical pastor who's joined the Catholic church and now teaches religion in a an upmarket monks' school. He was keen to justify his actions so feel he's not at peace with the move. It made me think how poor the care of pastors is when things get difficult for them. And how astute Catholic clergy are, more so than their evangelical counterparts. Reading New Testament Theology by Philip Esler, who's trying to justify praying to the saints. Feel it's been a wonky couple of days.
Read more

Dangerous ground in Parliament Hall

It was like taking part in a Harry Potter episode.    The location was Parliament Hall where the Scots Parliament met in 1645-46.   You enter it by pushing open an unmarked door at 66 South Street,  St Andrews.     Bright panelled walls and enormous portraits look down upon you in a friendly manner. We were warned by the Divinity Dean,  Ivor Davidson,  that we were on dangerous ground.   What we were embarking on "involves confession,  petition,  doxology and wonder.   We are at the edges of what we can say".       This was a conference on the Doctrine of the Trinity. The first to speak,  Tom McCall,   had flown in (by aeroplane) from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School,  Chicago.    Since arriving he had spent a night in a tent on Ben Nevis,  and now he spoke at breakneck speed on the biblical data. The second speaker looked as if he had flown in on a broom stick.   Your archetypical kindly wizard,   white bearded  Professor Paul Fiddes of Oxford University
Read more

MacDonalds in the Seminary

Image
Each day I teach 13 students in the Seminary and 650 outside of it. There's my Biblical theology class and my theology internet site. Such is the demand for materials in Spanish that readership of Recursos Teologicos just keeps on growing. Even when I neglect the thing for months, it thrives.This has some unexpected advantages. Marketing people like the site: it's in, effectively, the world's second language and offers a sought after product. In the past year I've been kindly given a string of the latest theological titles for review. The kind of books no minister would ever be allowed to buy. "Darling, do you mind if I spend £60 on Paul Helm's book on Calvin?", has only one answer. And my laptop benefits from £700 of the best Bible Software just for the effort of writing my opinion of it. There are other unexpected developments: people write in with problems. Agony Aunt style, I put my responses on the site's Blog (like a
Read more