Day 59 - still looking.

Day 59 and I'm thinking about my closing prayer at the end of this mornings services.
When we finished thinking through St. Paul's incredible statement "For me to live is Christ, to die is gain." I prayed that we would come to know the depth of Paul's character because I'm tired/we're tired of being shallow.

This afternoon I read about Louis Agassiz's teaching methods:

Louis was a 19th century paleontologist and Harvard professor who had a unique method of teaching/learning. One of his students Nathaniel Southgate Shaler, wrote in his autobiography about one of Agassiz's assignments. Agassiz pulled out a specimen jar and said "take this fish and look at it; when you think you're done I'll question you." After and hour or so, Shaler thought he'd observed everything there was to observe, but Agassiz didn't question Shaler that day. He didn't question him the next day. In fact, it was a week later that Agassiz said "tell me what you've seen." During that time, Shaler, who thought he'd seen everything there was to see, began to notice new things about the fish: the symmetry of the scales, the number of teeth, the positions of the gills, the paired organs. Shaler shared his observations, but Agassiz still wasn't satisfied that Shaler had seen everything there was to see.
He spent another week of ten-hour days looking at that fish from every angle imaginable. Shaler wrote in his autobiography that by the end of two weeks, he had made observations that astonished himself and satisfied Agassiz.

My intentional follow of Jesus Christ ....having studied Philippians 1 for a week, having preached it this morning .....I'm still looking at it, studying it, learning it.

Hopefully others are too.