spring is here!

Whew, I am finally back to the virtual world of the Internet that connects so many people to one another. I've been gone from this blog for a while due to a program excursion to Weimar, a spring break trip to Vienna, Lucerne, and Venice, and then a week (this past one) with my mother here in Berlin. Lots of leg exercise and not much for the fingers. I'm going to try to add some pictures right now and hopefully it'll work...
One of the pictures is the castle where Luther translated the Bible (visited during our program excursion). Another one is of me imitating a sculpture in front of the Parliament house in Vienna. And the third is of me and my mom about to eat pig's knuckles, a very german food. :)


I've finally caught up with the chapters from the book "Is the Bible Intolerant?" that we've (Jason, Christina, and I) been going through. I got a little too eager and read chapter 5 as well, but I won't say anything about it just yet and let the other two read it first. Chapter 4 "Is the Content of the Manuscripts Reliable?" addressed exactly the question I was thinking of as I read Orr-Ewing's argument about the reliability of the text. I think I actually understood her logic argument this time, as it relates to the possibility of miracles, how we can't just blindly say, "there is no way that miracles can happen and only things testable are true and real" because you can't test a statement like that either. But that's not the main point of this chapter. I knew before that general things in the Bible were probably provable through some historical texts, but seeing the specific references laid out really helped impress that on my mind. I think the text that shows belief in Jesus as the Christ early on was important in showing that people who weren't far removed in time from events in the Bible really were convinced based on what they've seen and heard about the truth of Jesus. I guess the last part of the chapter was more of a reminder about the previous chapter's content about how the text could not have been corrupted due to the unimaginable measures taken to ensure the accuracy of the text so that future generations could find truth from it themselves.
I'm really enjoying these readings. =)

I'll be starting classes at the german university next week. I welcome prayers for this.