Fruitful

(I forgot to post this awhile ago. So I'm posting it now :)) And relating to this weeks F word- Fruitful!

There's only a few more weeks of school left, and some friends from out of state are already returning home. With a wedding coming up and finals, it's been pretty crazy! But, I've had some time to catch up with a few people home from BYU. They were very interesting conversations filled with boys, some school, books, and more boys ;) One thing in particular stood out to me, and that was their stories of how religion and school went right hand in hand. Biology lessons would be related back to the gospel, math, everything. And that's something I think is very cool! I love seeing the ways that religion and "the rest of the world" can go hand in hand.

I'm going to school in Colorado in the middle of downtown. There is an array of everything down here and I love it, well, most of it. There's also a lot of weed present. My campus and BYU have a pretty different backdrop to each other. But, in my opinion, I'm getting the same opportunity as students at a religious school are. I'm making my education fruitful in more than one way. I'm merging two worlds together. 

The past two years, when I walk into class, I don't just bring half of myself. I bring all parts of me, the student, the almost wife, and the religious side. When I go to school I see it as learning about the world that my Heavenly Father created. He created language and math and science. When I was in my forensic anthropology class, I was faced with evolution, that's what the whole course was about. I spent a semester playing with skulls that were hundreds of thousands years old and had very different features than people today. I was presented with science and facts and numbers. Yet, my faith wasn't swayed the least. I didn't once doubt the existence of God. I looked for a way for this to all fit in with he plan and what I've been taught. And I have a pretty crazy theory about all those different skulls which my dad has told me is no way can be true but hey! I'll learn someday. 

When taking a Greek philosophy class I've been presented with so many different ideas about divinity and creation. I've read the philosophers and all that they've said. And as I sit there in class, I can't help think how similar the statements they are saying are to the things I believe to be true. The philosophers claimed they were seeking truth and wisdom, and what they came up with is only a few steps off of what I believe today. I'm actually working on a paper right now about all the similarities between Greek mythology and Christianity. 

It's possible to have that BYU experience anywhere, you just have to work a bit harder. And since I'm looking for these things on my own, I believe them and cherish them much more. Also, when reading scripture, I look at them in an English perspective. How the narrative was written, why was it written this way, why was this included and what not. This makes reading scriptures much more interesting and meaningful for me as well. This approach is fruitful for me and I'm so grateful for the things that I have learned for myself this way.

How do you make school fruitful for yourself?