Lead Me Where

Monday night at 10pm, and it’s uncharacteristically busy up here in the game room. There’s deep irony in the fact that the two places I promised my freshman self I’d steer clear of are the very places I’ve become rather fond of in recent months. The game room and the library.

But I’m not here playing games, although I do occasionally; Mary’s working on the other side of the game room desk, and Di and I have pulled our chairs up to the long, low counter. This is beginning to become a bit of a Monday night routine. Classes just barely over for the day, we gather around the desk; a small group of friends in the midst of the ebb and flow of game room activity.

It’s busy tonight and our conversation, our back and forth, rises and falls to be heard over the voices and games that fill the room. Homework out, pages open in front of us, we pass words back and forth, a heavy dose of jokes and laughter mixed into our conversation.

Minutes pass, a half hour. Behind us, people play foosball, and beyond them, three games of ping-pong are occurring simultaneously. Four individuals are playing pool in the corner, and the tables along the wall are host to a Catch Phrase game, and another band of students huddling around a rather intricate game of Ticket to Ride: Europe.

At the desk, Mary on one side and the two of us on opposite ends of the other side, we turn our attention to the work that needs done. Reading, email responses, papers. Pandora can just be heard above the noise, and we look up occasionally; a thought that bears sharing, a joke that brings a smile, a bit of information that might prove useful… or not.

Homework is done and slowly but surely, things are checked off check lists. Stray ping-pong balls bounce off my boots, and I lean out of the way as students approach the desk, temporarily relinquishing ID and lanyard in exchange for a board game, a card game, two pool sticks.

Time continues to march on, and I finish my emails and settle into my homework. Two midterms today, and what’s left between me and Missions Conference is an ever-shrinking list.

I pull my Bible and Hermeneutics folder out of my bag, fishing the assigned worksheet out of the stiff blue folder. Seven passages references, each with two lines following it. Read the passages, understand the passages, indicate the main point of the passages.

The instructions are concise and clear and I know what to do.

Blank worksheet page in front of me, I flip through my Bible. I’m finding the passages, but identifying their main point is serving to be a bit of a challenge. I want to get it right, and I’m having a bit of a hard time.

Taking notes in a notebook already nearly full from other classes, I change my tactic and approach the passages from a different angle. They are starting to make sense, and my notes are beginning to look increasingly more like the polished homework I’m to turn in tomorrow. This is good progress, for the most part.

Our third counterpart has since left, but Mary’s still on the other side of the counter, the clean, white light from her computer screen illuminating her face. I look around the room, slowly emptying of students, before turning back to her. I’ve been providing her with a fragmented series of comments about my work for the past hour, in exchange for her commentary; side notes and random are nothing new to this homework time.

You ever just step back and think and realize that studying the Word of God is our homework?

Mary nods, grinning. She knows this. She’s thought through this deep privilege before. The life-giving Word of God is our textbook here. Not the only one, but certainly the most important. Even as we fall more in love with the Author and Creator of life, we’re assigned to study, to scour, to learn from, His letter to us His children.

My exegetical idea worksheet, previously a minor challenge to undertake and conquer, suddenly becomes a blessing in itself- Here. Take this, the very Bible you read every morning, and study it more, dive into it deeper, delve further into its truth, and call that privilege “homework”.

An oddly crowded game room, three friends, a homework worksheet, and the unimaginable blessing of studying God’s Word for school.

~Natalia