I finished teaching about half an hour ago. It was the last intensive and the last class of this academic year. My name was written all over the students time table this time - I had almost a full day of SDA theology yesterday and today we finished up with a day long homiletics marathon. I'm dead tired and happy. Very happy indeed. Tomorrow they'll write me an exam in theology and will preach their sermons. My work is done.

It was on Tuesday evening when I did my last preparations and was packing for my trip to Tartu that I suddenly realised the importance of it all - I don't think I had felt it so clearly before. So I just kept walking back and forth between my bedroom and living room with newly found mountain of responsibility. This is so important, vitally important for me to be able to articulate some things clearly and correctly, I thought. And so it was that yesterday we took a whole 1,5 hours to go through Andreasen's theology so I sat on the edge of the lecturer's desk and just talked - it wasn't even teaching, much more like talking - to them about eschatology and sinlessness and last generation and perfect love and Jesus. And I think I almost pleaded with them to go and teach good and balanced and Christ-centred theology to their (future) church members, for their own sake and for their church members sake and for the sake of this sorry world.

There's one thing I read from G. Knight's book last week as I prepared for these classes that keeps ringing in my head. He talks about influential theologians and he says somewhere that the most influential people in our church over the past 100 years have been university lecturers and not so much powerful preachers or great writers. It got stuck in my head and is probably one of the reasons which has made me take this lecturing session so seriously. Not that I consider myself to be very influential or anything but it just reminded me the importance of lecturing and of the quality of my words as I teach future pastors and through them in some invisible way also their church members. Such serious stuff. My shoulders really aren't strong enough for such responsibility but the Almighty has seen fit to place me here so I do what I can.

But to balance the intensity and seriousness of the lecturing the Almighty has also seen fit to give me an amazing family - yesterday I finished the day with a fierce pillow fight with my cousin's little sons. Needless to say, I lost the fight. :)