I am the man who has known affliction
Under the rod of His wrath ...

	You ought not ask me what motivated me to consider the master's
	program, but who motivated me and how.  The Shepherd not only
	leads but also drives us sheep along the way.  I am one who
	knows what it is to be punished by God; I am one for whom
	Lamentations is a song of intimate memory.

He has walled me in and I cannot break out; ...
He has walled in my ways with hewn blocks,
he has made my paths a maze.

	My relations with my God have not always been pleasant and sweet,
	and nothing reassures me more than this.  A friend of mine once
	took a battery of vocational aptitude tests to help him pick a
	career, only to be told that he could be anything he wanted.
	"I knew that," he told me.  I, too, walk in a maze, not knowing
	where I will be led.  But I know that God has taken an interest 
	in me.  I know that "He guides the lowly in the right path, and
	teaches the lowly his way."

	As the decades have passed, I have learned that I am not cut
	out to be an academic nor an administrator nor a public school
	teacher (even though I was called and channeled into teaching).
	I have been taught that I am not called to ordination.  I have
	tried to change careers only to discover that I was still a
	data processing professional.  As a computer programmer, I am
	already a master.

He is a lurking bear to me,
A lion in hiding ...

	God pounces on me lest I become comfortable.  When programming
	becomes my career, God sends me to lead Bible studies, youth
	classes and camps.  He send afflicted co-workers to me for
	wisdom and assurance.  He sets me chest deep in a flooded 
	river.  In these things, I am no master.

	People have kept me from bed to explain the nature of Trinity
	and interrupted me at work to inquire about my view of the
	inspiration of scripture.  People have asked me to walk city 
	streets to discuss a sense of personal failure and invited me
	into the woods to hear confession.  In these things, I am
	no master.

	I have no hope or expectation for ministry beyond the certainty
	that God will continue to waylay me and that ministry will be
	thrust upon me in unexpected ways.

"The LORD is my portion," I say with full heart;
Therefore I will hope in Him ...

	Rich as I am in things that I hardly need, God reminds me of my
	poverty.  God is all I have.  What choice is open to me, except
	to trust God and to walk whatever path he opens for me?

It is good for a man, when young,
To bear a yoke ....

	My goal is to be as ready as I can for whatever God has in
	store for me.  Preparation demands discipline, and it is
	intellectual and theological discipline which the master's
	program offers.









(Lamentation 3 and Psalm 25 quoted from the
New Jewish Publication Society version, 1982)

								November 10, 1990
								June 3, 1998
								May 29, 2023