Relationships, Revelation, and Responsibility

We have been in Budapest for six days now, having left Grand Rapids a week ago.  And in the week here, we have been re-acquainting ourselves with this city - with its beauty mostly, but also with its difference, the smells, the unfamiliar language, the change in time zone, the many different customs and quirks.  I have had a few meetings with colleagues who will help me with the work of directing the program, I set up a new bank account, visited the dorm the students will stay in, re-connected with Hungarian friends, I ran three times for a total of about 15 miles - up and down the Danube and around Margaret Island - and I have done a fair amount of reading in preparation for the teaching part of this work.

I read one of our key texts, Steven Garber's book Visions of Vocation: Common Grace for the Common Good, and in this book my friend Steve writes about how difficult it is for people in this time in the history of the world to simultaneously both know and love the world.  He offers three realities that he says always mark covenants when they appear in the Hebrew scripture - these realities are: Relationships, Revelation, and Responsibility.  In covenant-making, God always offers the people of God a relationship first, then a revelation, and finally a responsibility.  To God's people, God gives us promises, but also expects their response - a particular responsibility to act in the face of what we know, what we have learned.  There is more than tourism to study abroad, much more.  This fall I will work to introduce students to this balance - in our time in Eastern Europe, I expect that God will offer each of us an ongoing relationship, a revelation that is both special and general, as well as a set of responsibilities - some things to do with our knowing.  We will learn things both wonderful and terrible, as students always do.  And we will respond somehow.

Yesterday we took a long walk with the three of us around some of Central Pest's more interesting sites, and Abi took pictures along the way.  She caught some good essence of Budapest in our journey - I'll share a few of her pictures here:

This one is inside one of the more famous "ruin bars" of Budapest, SzimplaKert;

 This is Raday street, where we stopped for a beverage break on our walk;

 Julie and me inside Szimpla;

 Abi on a bench near our apartment;

 Our marketplace around the corner - Belvaros Piac translates Downtown Market;

 The famous Budapest Opera House, about a ten minute walk from our apartment

We have another week of getting ready ahead - I hope to meet with some contacts for the students' service-learning placements, do some more reading, get an orientation planned for students, meet with the Hungarian language professor, and continue to plan and pray for the semester ahead.