11/25/2016

This week started with my serious attempt to work myself to death. Work has an incredible liquid quality to fill every minute and hour of one's day - even if in the beginning of the week your schedule looks nice and humane. As soon as you sit down at your desk, things start adding and piling up. I don't quite know how it happens. But it always does. On Monday and Tuesday I left the office for gym after 7pm and made it to home only around 9pm. 12 hour days. Which in a sense does not really matter because there's no-one waiting for me at home, but on the other hand, it starts burning you out slowly. By Wednesday afternoon when me and J. came from the radio station after having recorded a program on Desmond Doss and Hacksaw Ridge I started smelling smoke around my head. I was getting really tired. I still had to host a small group gathering in the afternoon and then rush to catch an evening bus to Tartu. It was all becoming too much. On a bus I thought - argh, THIS time I really don't enjoy going to Tartu. I usually enjoy it because it mostly means teaching in the Seminary and seeing my cousin's family and having some cake at Werner Cafe - all things I deeply love. This time it was only the Seminary's board meeting that took me to Tartu - not exactly the most thrilling of things - and the whole thing felt like a nuisance. I'd rather stay at home, I thought to myself.

The Seminary's principal had invited me to stay at their place on Wednesday night (as the board meeting started early on Thursday) and also to stay for Thursday evening to celebrate a mutual friend's 50th birthday and the Thanksgiving. I was sceptical about the latter but in the end I thought, I could just as well go back to Tallinn on Friday morning and stay in Tartu for another night, all in all it doesn't matter much and as I have my (new) laptop with me anyway, I can work in Tartu just as well. So I accepted the invite, with less enthusiasm than would have been polite, but accepted it nevertheless.

We were having early breakfast on Thursday morning before the board meeting and being around good people and being away from the office was starting to do me good (although I also have wonderful people in the office, no mistake). I was beginning to appreciate being in Tartu again and the principal's hospitality just melted my heart. And suddenly her husband (a fellow lecturer in the Seminary and also my lecturer in Amsterdam - a wonderful man), pouring himself a cup of coffee at the kitchen table, sighed and said, "You know, life is actually really beautiful". And I was taken aback because it was such a simple statement which had started to vanish from my sight over the few days. And it shifted something in me. Because, honestly, he was right. Life was beautiful. All was well. I was enjoying blessings and friendships and work. I had no reason to complain. So I sat in the board meeting and did my running around in Tartu, his statement sill echoing somewhere in the back of my mind. Life was beautiful. Life was beautiful.

And then the evening came. We prepared the birthday feast and I was all excited. The principal's home felt more and more like my own home. Guests came and went, we said grace and counted, in a good American Thanksgving manner, the things we had to be grateful for that evening, we ate until we could eat no more, and real gratitude rose from my heart for these people I could spend this evening with. It really was Thanksgiving and I had a million reasons to give thanks. The time flew in the good company and most of the guests left but a few stayed for longer. In the end, there were only five of us around the living room table - and as I looked around me, I realised I had ended up in a very exclusive company, in the company of the power people of Estonian Baptist church. There was the principal of the Seminary, her husband, the birthday lady who works for the European Baptist Federation, and the former president of the Estonian Baptist Conference. All of us Seminary's lecturers, all of us with theological education, all of us serving the church in one way or another. Four Baptists and one Adventist. And we spoke and spoke over cups of tea, discussing theology, our mutual concerns and also our theological differences. But not for one second did I feel left out or misunderstood. Everything was said in mutual respect. I even caught the former president of their conference, a man who has in the past expressed his suspicion about Adventists, looking at me with big round eyes as I explained our theology. With all respect, sir, I know my stuff. :) It really was one good discussion, the kind of discussion I always miss since coming back from Newbold. And when it was nearing midnight, the principal's husband would read a verse from the Scriptures and we all said the Lord's prayer together.

I couldn't fall asleep for a long time after that. Such people! Such a Thanksgiving! Such a theological discussion! So much love!

All I could say was, "Life is beautiful."

Thanks given.

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