Michael Ruth's reflections

As the final two weeks of my time with the church was approaching, it dawned on myself and my pastors, that I still had not yet figured out a bible study. I went in my office with a few planned bible study books, and also looked on the internet for materials. I was not really seeing much of anything that sparked my mind. I decided I would create a bible study out of music. I made a list of songs by non-Christian artists that had religious or anti-religious themes or undertones to them. I took notes and did research on how the lyrics were religious or biblical in some way. I contacted most of my friends, some from my church and some not and figured out when we could meet. For the first session, seven or eight of my friends showed up, and we listened to five different songs and discussed them and interpreted the lyrics. Through all of our sessions the group met together, we had very meaningful conversations about how songs by artists like Johnny Cash, U2, and Tool could taken in different ways regarding faith.

I was really surprised that I even came up with the idea in the first place. I was also surprised that a bunch of my friends who aren’t always the first ones to mention faith were so apt to participate in something like this. If I am interested in the material, I could see myself leading devotionals or bible studies in the future. This was one of the things through Explore that was kind of an unexpected joy.

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For my spiritual discipline I decided on fasting. I chose it because I believe that if it is done right, it can be an amazing tool to use towards growing in your faith. I also chose this partly because I knew it would challenge me, and I liked the idea of intentionally sacrificing something in life to be closer with God. Last year in school my friends and I fasted from eating one day a week through lent. This was one of the initial experiences in my life that turned me on to fasting. When I chose it for this summer though, I wanted to come up with more creative things to fast from than just food. I also learned previously, that when I fasted from food, it didn’t really do a whole lot besides make me think about how hungry I was.

I enjoyed the technology fast at the end of Explore, which gave me a few ideas. My family went to our cottage for a long weekend later in the summer, and I had to come home early and be there for three days by myself. While unintentionally fasting from my family, I decided I would fast from air conditioning for those three days. I knew I could easily reach over and turn the thermostat down to 65 degrees, but it really made me think of God when I would come those afternoons and evenings in July to a house hotter than the outside. I also fasted from watching TV for five days, for the sake of not just sitting down and losing myself in TV shows for two hours.

At the beginning of the summer, my iPod broke completely. I slept with that thing, and hardly went anywhere without it. I looked at it breaking as God forcing me to fast from having an iPod for the whole summer. In my mind it was like God knew the real things I should be focusing on more fully, and just went ahead and forced me to fast. I tried not to tell other people when I was fasting, because I knew it would help me grow more if I did it by myself as much as possible. I also didn’t want to seek sympathy or shove my faith in anybody’s face.

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Living with and getting to know the Explore group was one of the most rewarding and best experiences I’ve ever had. One of the greatest things about the program is that faith is the one thing everybody in the group has in common. No matter how different each person is, the bottom line is that everyone could come together and have a meaningful worship session.