Mark 12:30 “The most important one,” answered Jesus, is this; Hear O Israel the Lord is our God the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. And the second is this, Love your neighbor as yourself.
As a class, we recite this verse before every meal and so far we have done it over 350 times. When you say something that many times it can tend to lose a lot of it’s meaning. God has really used this past week to remind our class of the true depth of meaning in that verse. Michael Smalley, our speaker this week, taught primarily on this passage and how it relates to our relationships. Michael was an amazing speaker who had many stories to tell about his life. He and his wife both run the Smalley Institute, which helps counsel people in their dating or marriage relationships. Each day he would share a story from his life and use that as an example of what to do or sometimes what not to do in your relationships. He taught us how to best deal with conflict and that the most important thing is that we should honor God and honor people. This idea portrayed in Mark 12:30 came up again during book discussion on Wednesday. We were discussing chapters 2 & 3 of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book Life Together. In his book, Dietrich Bonhoeffer walks through his ideas of what Christian community should be. During the discussion we came upon Bonhoeffer’s idea that one of the ways we can love God is by loving other people, especially in Christian community. God has blessed our class this week. He gave renewed meaning to a verse that we all say 3 times daily.
Thursday was a lot of fun because of our theme dinner. This weeks theme was “Cruise Night”. All the students dressed as different cruise tourist stereotypes. Some put bits of sunscreen on their noses, others threw on their Hawaiian shirts, and others just put on a dress shirt, bow-tie, and apron to become our waiters. Once we finished taking pictures on the lawn we entered the transformed dinning room. Upon some of the lights hung life perseveres, tablecloths covered every table, and with a video projector displaying beach vistas, the mood was really that of a cruise. After we had all finish eating we entered the Great room for our Fantastic Joshua Cruise Talent Show. We were given 5 minutes to decide if we wanted to do something and sign up. We all gather around and enjoyed the amazing entertainment skills of our fellow students. People participated in awesome karaoke and displayed their amazing magic tricks. Some even debuted their original songs. It was a night full of unique moments that will not soon be forgotten.
It was a great way to end an incredible week of teaching.
Check out all the photos from Cruise Night here!
Also, check out our podcast with Michael Smalley to get a quick overview of what he brought to the students this week!