Issue link: http://denverseminary.uberflip.com/i/1433252
16 DECEMBER REDIRECTING OUR GAZE Truly He taught us to love one another His law is love and His gospel is peace. Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother And in His name all oppression shall cease. Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we, Let all within us praise His holy name. 1 Timothy 1:5 "Truly He taught us to love one another." "The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure hear t and a good conscience and a sincere faith" (1 Timothy 1:5). For two years of university, I (Eva) studied music. In a class session about half way through the first semester of music theor y, we students had frustrated ourselves to distraction with a mechanical aspect of notation. The professor instructed us to put our books and papers and pencils on the floor and to hang on a minute. He left the classroom and returned with his own instrument, a cello. He placed a chair on a small platform at the front of the room and proceeded to cleanse our minds with a performance that left us slack-jawed. Then he said, "You have to remember why you need theor y. You need it because you love music. The goal is the music." The two of us share education as our doctoral discipline. Josh teaches leadership theor y. Eva teaches the pastoral care and counseling theor y that undergirds chaplaincy. Theor y is critical. It provides a framework for analysis and action in complex circumstances. Understanding theor y, however, is never the goal of our instruction. When we teach, the goal of our instruction is to ignite students' love for the world and to engage its needs from a pure hear t, a good conscience, and a sincere faith. During this season, we sing that Jesus "taught us to love one another." In the Gospel accounts of His teaching, we see that many of His students flummoxed themselves while tr ying to square their theor y of the world with Jesus' teaching. He often responded by redirecting their gaze from their frustration to His love, as He did washing the disciples' feet the night before He died, the night He gave them a new command. In this way, Jesus taught them to love one another. The goal of His instruction was love. As love prepares us for Christ's second advent, from which this season gets its name, may we live out His teaching, truly. Eva Bleeker, MA/MS, Assistant Professor of Counseling, and Dr. Josh Bleeker, DEdMin, Chief of Staff O Holy Night Lyrics by Placide Cappeau (1843), composed by Adolphe Adam (1847)