A Reflection on Fuller Seminary

I can’t believe my time at Fuller seminary is almost over. This is my last quarter in Pasadena. Man, how time has flown! Fuller has impacted me greatly, but it hasn’t always been easy. Fuller has an uncanny ability to completely deconstruct and reconstruct everything you thought you knew and wanted.

In other words, it is as if you spent your whole life building this grandiose sculpture out of legos, and then your little brother comes and knocks it down. 

At first you are kind of angry because you worked darn hard on that thing and it took years to create! It was good! You were comfortable with your creation! So you consider punching said knocker-downer but when you realize you can’t do that you decide instead to question whether you were even meant to build in the first place. Apparently there seems to have been holes in your lego sculpture, problems perhaps, so maybe you weren’t qualified to build and should instead go on to basket weaving or McDonalds serving. 

But with time and good professors you realize that this deconstruction isn’t actually a setback, but an opportunity. It is an opportunity to take the pieces strewn across the floor and put them back together in a different way, using the new skills you have acquired to remake the sculpture into something better and different. Many of the pieces are still the same, but you have changed in the process, and therefore the product is entirely different than you had ever imagined or pictured, it is a thing of beauty. It is a work in progress as your vision becomes more clear and as others join in to help your dream take form. In the end, you are glad for the process of knocking down and rebuilding because you realize that it has made you stronger, more focused, and better. 

So yes, Fuller does have a great talent of taking all that you think you know and making you reconsider, but it is a talent that I am grateful for because Fuller doesn’t let you stay comfortable. They challenge you to think deeper, wider, to question, and to not stop at your first thought, as my current professor put it. Fuller makes you strive to be the best servant of God that you can be, and as I look back I am glad for the challenges and the probing questions. As I soon go back into the world to serve God with all that I now know I am confident that I was meant to build, and that I am useful for His purposes. 

Fuller, its a good place ya’ll.