“You shall observe the festival of weeks, the first fruits of wheat harvest, and the festival of ingathering at the turn of the year. ” (Exodus 34:22)
Things are busy on campus, as we build toward the celebration of Trinity Days on Thursday and Friday. It feels right somehow that this week coincides with the Jewish observance of Sukkot, a weeklong harvest festival celebrating God’s loving care. It feels right because the week of Trinity Days is also a time of harvest ingathering and celebration.
TLS Alumni Council Chair Kim Conway Hester is on campus for the week, connecting with friends, catching up on theological reading in Hamma Library, and enjoying Graeter’s ice cream.
One of our interns is back on campus (from Texas!) for the week, eager to reconnect with faculty and friends and to hear this year’s Trinity Days speaker, Dr. Cynthia Moe-Lobeda.
Former TLS homiletics prof. Hank Langknecht is on campus, too. On Tuesday, he preached and presided at eucharist in Gloria Dei. Dr. Langknecht is teaching the intro preaching course for our second year students this fall, and this week he finally gets to meet with them in person!
Biblical Studies prof. Rachel Wrenn led us in chanting Psalm 119:33-40 as part of worship. Instead of simply announcing the verse numbers, she mentioned that we would be chanting the “He” portion of the psalm, a reference that her students in Biblical Hebrew picked up on. Biblical Greek is a requirement for the Master of Divinity degree, but Biblical Hebrew is an elective. Dr. Wrenn had 10 students when she taught Biblical Hebrew for the first time last spring, and she has another seven students taking Hebrew this fall. It’s exciting to see how excited our students are about learning!
Each week in worship, we pray for one of our interns, as well as for their supervising pastor and the congregation where they are serving. We’ll start including this information in the Announcements section of New Beginnings each week so you can join us in prayer.
When Trinity Days wraps up with lunch on Friday, we’ll roll right into a meeting of the Trinity Advisory Board.
So, it’s a very busy week on campus, but then harvest time is always a busy time, whether one is harvesting crops or harvesting workers for God’s vineyard. It’s a good time to be the church, and a good time to be forming leaders for Christ’s church at work in the world. Thanks be to God!
The Rev. Kathryn A. Kleinhans, Ph.D.
Dean
Trinity Lutheran Seminary forms leaders for Christ’s church at work in the world.