T-minus forty-three hours

A year ago my buddy Ryan said that "the future has a strange way of casually becoming the present." So it goes for me. By this point on Sunday I'll be five hours into my flight to Istanbul via Frankfurt; what was once a three-month summer at home has come and gone. I've enjoyed being home with my parents, following the Tigers, and cycling. With several friends of mine having recently begun their teaching careers, a real part of me wants to be in the classroom right now as well. And I do hope that an amazing job will come along for me next year. (If you know of any middle or high schools with openings in the biology or chemistry realms, I'm your man!)

During my senior year at Michigan State I read through the book of Romans during my spring break trip to Istanbul. My heart sank at the truth that, as regards the vast majority of people in Turkey, "no one understands . . . and the way of peace they have not known" (3:11a; 17). But later in the week I read the following, which lifted my spirits so greatly: "as it is written, 'Those who have never been told of him will see, and those who have never heard will understand' " (15:21, emphases mine). Paul is quoting Isaiah's prophecy regarding the Suffering Servant (Isa. 52:15), as people will come to understand the message of the revelation of God's power ("the arm of the LORD," 53:1). And so again I find it fitting that culminating Psalm 22, which so vividly portrays the suffering Messiah and his triumph through God's deliverance, are equally encouraging words of hope for the gospel message:

All the ends of the earth shall remember
and turn to the LORD,
and all the families of the nations
shall worship before you.
For kingship belongs to the LORD,
and he rules over the nations.

Posterity shall serve him;
it shall be told of the Lord to the coming generation;
they shall come and proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn,
that he has done it. (vv. 27-8, 30-1)

Praise God that his grace and the triumph of the gospel in the lives of people from everywhere on the globe is far more stable and sure than the Tigers' hitting.