Rooted & Established in Love: Kings, Aliens, and the Beast

The past two weeks have been two of the most intense of this school. Last week we studied Revelation, which is a super overwhelming book because there are so many ways to interpret the prophecies and strange events that John sees in his visions. Although at the end of the week I had more questions than answers, I still learned a lot. Something that has been really helping me in this school is just observing the text - seeing what the verses are actually saying in context. During Revelation week, I realized that so many people take a tiny passage of the Bible and form an entire view of how the world will end based on that, without reading the rest of the book. Two good examples of this are the commonly held views of the Rapture and Armageddon. After studying many of the symbols in the visions of Revelation, I still don't know how the world will end. And I'm okay with that. The important thing is that we know that Christ overcame and will return in victory.

We hadn't really studied many books in the Old Testament yet, so this week with Kings and Esther had a very different feel. I had always thought of Kings as boring with lots of lists, so all the action packed into these two books really surprised me. One of the assignments we had to do for class was making a table of all the kings, listing whether they were good or bad and the significant things they did during their reign. Of all the kings, only about 3 (out of 40) remained totally faithful to the Lord. Another project I enjoyed was doing a character study comparing one good king with one bad king. Both of the kings I chose spent a significant amount of time during their reign destroying idols and false gods that people worshiped. However, their motivations were totally different: Jehu, the bad king, did it for selfish reasons, while Josiah, the good king, did it to honor the Lord. In response to this study, I made a video (with the help of a friend) demonstrating how we all need to destroy idols in our lives. For me, the expectations of others or society is often a struggle and can get in the way of my relationship with God.

To finish off the week, we studied the book of Esther. Although God is never mentioned in the book, the main message of Esther is God's provision. He used Esther to save her people, the Jews, from a fate of death. In response to what we learned through this book, our entire school had to perform a drama of the story of Esther. We put on a creative interpretation with a theme of Cowboys vs. Aliens. It was so much fun! Here are some pictures of the drama.