We started thinking yesterday on things unseen about places that matter to us, or actually

places that matter to me, and I hope is that if I share with you some of the places that

have been important to me, it might stimulate you to think about the places and ways that

God has come to you and blessed you. Yesterday I talked about a pulpit, and today I want

to talk about a study bedroom I occupied for a year when I was 18. In college and university

residences in the United Kingdom, students usually have a study bedroom of their own,

with perhaps some shared facilities with other students. My room was numbered C37. Block

C in the residence, third floor, room 7. I haven't been back in that room since I was

a student, and I'm sure they don't have a plaque that says Synchroferguson once studied

and slept here. But the memory of that room is sacred to me because of several life-changing

things that happened in that small space. Some of them are actually too private to share,

but I think maybe one of them or actually a couple of related moments are worth sharing.

As I said I was 18, I was in my second year at university, I was studying philosophy

and psychology. And actually I think I was reading Martin Luther's comment that Romans

is a key to the whole Bible. When the thought struck me, if that's true, it means that while

the whole Bible is inspired by God, there are some parts of it, some books in it that

function like a set of keys that open up all the other books. So while I'd been reading

the Bible for about ten years at that time, for the first time it struck me, what I need

to do is to give special attention to those key books, to spend more time studying them,

trying to master them, or better let them master me. And the way I think and the way I feel

and act. And so that was what I did. In fact, one of the memories that makes me smile was

that later in the academic year, I went to the local Christian bookshop with some prize

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