Dear Fellow Seminarians:
A friend leaves town today. I will miss him. He came over many Saturdays to join in a semi-regular ex-pat coffee-klastch we had at my home in the late mornings. He has a Pentecostal and Methodist family background, which we thought similar to my Baptist background, or more similar than that of our other coffee-klastch regulars, which included a few Muslims (from Pakistan), one Catholic (from New Zealand), one yogi (Australian), and an elderly lady from Tennessee and the Seventh Day Adventist Church.
I have yearned for association with more Baptists here in Daejeon, and while I knew one, from my first university posting here, at Mokwon University, I felt oddly semi-estranged by him, or just not warmly welcomed, so unlike all the Baptists I knew from my hometown, Taylorsville, and those of my college, UNC Chapel Hill. I saw him at church from time to time, when we went across town to the only English service we knew of at that time. He seemed pleased to see us there, but I did not sense any especial affirmation of our common belief as Baptists that extended outside the time in Church.
He has remained unmarried throughout the fourteen years I have known him, and expressed an interest in marriage in the abstract, whenever I mentioned it, but never any concrete plans or sense of duty to pursue marriage within any existing romance, which in a sense is fine, given that not all are called to that office. However, the perplexing thing is the fact that he indeed dates. He nearly always seems to be in a relationship, and I wonder if he is not just too picky, expecting "the perfect girl," and may just not realize how picky he is.
I believe that you marry to whom you feel God calls you, and that from there, you together allow God to continue His creation and perfection of you ... not that we will ever be perfect before heaven, but that we could expect to see evident signs of progress all along the way. And any persistent absence of such signs should be a warning to take some time out to contemplate and pray.
Love, Nathaniel
A friend leaves town today. I will miss him. He came over many Saturdays to join in a semi-regular ex-pat coffee-klastch we had at my home in the late mornings. He has a Pentecostal and Methodist family background, which we thought similar to my Baptist background, or more similar than that of our other coffee-klastch regulars, which included a few Muslims (from Pakistan), one Catholic (from New Zealand), one yogi (Australian), and an elderly lady from Tennessee and the Seventh Day Adventist Church.
I have yearned for association with more Baptists here in Daejeon, and while I knew one, from my first university posting here, at Mokwon University, I felt oddly semi-estranged by him, or just not warmly welcomed, so unlike all the Baptists I knew from my hometown, Taylorsville, and those of my college, UNC Chapel Hill. I saw him at church from time to time, when we went across town to the only English service we knew of at that time. He seemed pleased to see us there, but I did not sense any especial affirmation of our common belief as Baptists that extended outside the time in Church.
He has remained unmarried throughout the fourteen years I have known him, and expressed an interest in marriage in the abstract, whenever I mentioned it, but never any concrete plans or sense of duty to pursue marriage within any existing romance, which in a sense is fine, given that not all are called to that office. However, the perplexing thing is the fact that he indeed dates. He nearly always seems to be in a relationship, and I wonder if he is not just too picky, expecting "the perfect girl," and may just not realize how picky he is.
I believe that you marry to whom you feel God calls you, and that from there, you together allow God to continue His creation and perfection of you ... not that we will ever be perfect before heaven, but that we could expect to see evident signs of progress all along the way. And any persistent absence of such signs should be a warning to take some time out to contemplate and pray.
Love, Nathaniel
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