Dear Friends,
Hope you are all staying dry today. The rain is so . . . . wet! I knew I should have worn my boots instead of tennis shoes, but I opted for cute outfit instead of dry feet. Oh well. Live and learn.
This is what’s on the schedule this week:
Soul Feast
Worship:
Tonight @ DUC (Tuesday). We will meet in room 308, since 340 is occupied. We’ll start at 6:30pm, but feel free to come and hang out at 6pm. Faith UMC is coming to lead worship this week. Our message will center around what it means to “Create a Safe Place for Students to Meet Jesus.” This is part of our mission statement. So come and find out more about who we are and why we do what we do!
Solid Rock Café
Free Meal and Bible Study:
Thursday @ Wesley Foundation. We’ll begin gathering at 6pm and then eat and have our program. This week we are looking at how friendship shapes our lives, especially friends who have the common bond of faith. Then we’ll travel down the hill and set up our Movie on the Lawn @ DUC south lawn. We will be showing “Napoleon Dynamite” at 8:30. Bring a friend!
Now for Sami’s Ramblings About Jesus:
I’ve been thinking lately about what I want to say to those brave souls who took me for University Experience. (Yay! I’m teaching two classes this semester!) I want to tell them to live their lives fully, to “be all that they can be,” to discover what they are most passionate about and then do it with all their heart. As freshmen, it’s a good time to hear that message, because so much of their college careers are still before them. They can shape their time here into anything they want it to be.
But I think about this message for all of us, whether we are freshmen in our first semester of college or not. It is so important. Because each of us can make a difference. Even if we’ve never lived passionately before, we can do it now. We can invest ourselves in excellence. We can give the best of ourselves to this life and live it well.
I love that scripture that says, “Render service with enthusiasm, as to the Lord and not to men and women” (Ephesians 6:7). If I were to make a gift of my life, I would want it to be a life that was lived with lots of heart. I would want it to resemble the same single-hearted devotion and expression and enthusiasm for living that we usually associate with famous animal actors, like Lassy, Flipper, Black Beauty, Sea Biscuit, and Old Yeller. I believe Jesus did that. He lived His passion. And His passion was people. And He expressed His passion for us in a way that defies all human (I want to hang on to life at all costs) reason: He gave up His life so that in His death we could see the love of God that sacrifices everything to save us. His passion became the Passion, displayed on a cross. If He did that for me, couldn’t I do something with excellence, for Him?
I’ve determined that the only things we can really make a difference in are those that we are passionate about. Where is your passion? Are you living in some way connected to it? Are giving your all to it? It may not be what you do all the time, but hopefully in some part of your life you feel fully alive. Hopefully you sense that you can express something of yourself to the world you live in with enthusiasm. And hopefully you can render this living life to its fullest as a gift to God who has already given you His everything already. Just think of it this way, that thing you are passionate about is really God’s way of doing something awesome in the world. And He chooses to do it through you: “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Romans 12:1).
Blessings,
Sami
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