What If God ...?
02-08-2021
By Brenda Pogue
When I first entered seminary, I had no idea what was in store for me. Shaped by the work environment of corporate America, then carving out a non-ecclesial, entrepreneurial niche for myself over the past twenty years, seminary was far outside my purview. In many respects, it still is, but I am an avid learner, wanting to absorb every morsel of available theological knowledge that is put before me.
I recall unsuccessfully holding back the tears in P.I.F., just a few short weeks into my first semester, as my fellow seminarians shared their vocational callings while I sat vocation-less. “Why, Lord, am I here?” This was the question that haunted me throughout my entire first year. Then, just before the end of Spring semester last year, I had an epiphanous moment of what God was calling me to do – to teach. Teach what exactly, then, became the new burning question.
I am currently taking the most wonderful course that is beginning to illumine my vocation in Christian Education. It is an intensive course, but I wish it was weekly so that I can be saturated in the wisdom of the professor, the readings, and the assignments. Funny, I never had any real interest in any of the history classes I had taken before seminary. However, those classes were not about my history, Black history.
What if God, as God calls us into our vocations, also plans the journey and prepares the way, even guiding our coursework? Proverbs 24:27 instructs, “Prepare your work outside, get everything ready for you in the field; and after that build your house.” It is divinely apropos that I am taking this course in my graduating semester, begun during Black History Month, while I am excitedly mired in researching Black history content for this newsletter. This is the spark that ignites my desire to learn about and, subsequently, teach others. The burden I carry is the fear that this richly tragic, inspiringly beautiful history of African-Americans will become somehow changed, or lost, like parts of biblical history that will never be recovered.
But God is helping me build my house. Because of this course, because of this seminary, because of Black History Month, I can declare, as I unsuccessfully hold back the tears of joyous discovery, that mine is a pedagogical vocation, teaching an African-American historical and exegetical perspective in order to build faith that is liberative and transformative. God is helping me build my house.
