Reflections on Week Eight: The Art of Reseach

This may be my favorite week of teaching yet! At least it's really close between this and The Problem of Suffering...

Our speaker this week was Ann Smith from New Zealand. She's been with YWAM since the beginning, and was one of the people who started the SOIWSWs with Paul Hawkins. I must admit one of the reasons I love her so much is because I think she's a lot like me... or I'm a lot like her... or we're a lot alike... whatever. Her teaching covered the importance of research, its benefits, how to reseach, and what types of things to look for when researching. We all have our own perspectives, worldviews, and biases, but research helps us to see beyond these things. To be effective researchers, we must examine as many sources as possible--not just the ones we agree with or the ones that are easily accessible.

I was going to continue with a summary of the teaching, but I realize that is probably not what you are reading this blog to find out. If you wanted to know all the details of the teaching, you'd probably be in this school with me :-). What is more interesting to write about (and probably read about, too) is how this week impacted me personally. I know God is calling me to be a researcher. He has so much He wants to reveal to me as I study the histories and cultures of peoples and nations. I believe many of the keys to peace and reconciliation are found in a study of the past. The wounds a nation has sustained and perpetrated in the past have a profound impact on its present actions and reactions. These are the things I want to understand.

God is also calling me to be an intercessor. Not just in prayer, but also as a lifestyle. The reseach I do will not only inform my prayers, but will inform my intercession as a peacemaker. Peacemaking is intercession! I'm finding it difficult to put into words the connections that have been made in my mind this last week. But I feel like a lot of things have come together for me--for my future, my calling, my identity, for why God has called me to do this school, for the next two years in the Peace Corps. There has been a definite fusing; I'm always looking for connections and themes, so this synthesis is very exciting to me. Now all I have to do is figure out how to articulate it a little better :-).