Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Wesley Foundation E-letter, United Methodist Campus Ministry

Dear Friends,

Amazing how quickly the weather can change!  Hope you are finding a way to stay dry on these windy, rainy, fall days!

Here is what is going on this week:

Worship

Tonight at Soul Feast we will enjoy a Taize' worship service.  This is a meditative prayer service that is filled with music, quiet reflections, scripture readings, and community prayers.  We will meet @ DUC, room 340 at 6:30pm.

Weekly Meal & Program

Thursday for our Solid Rock Cafe' we will meet at the Wesley Foundation at 6:30pm for a meal and program.  Since it was too cold last week to watch "Glory Road" on the lawn, we will watch it together in-doors at the Foundation after dinner. We will also think together about the ways we see the gospel represented in the themes presented by the movie.  Just come and take a study break.  We'll pull out the popcorn!

Now for Sami's Ramblings About Jesus:

It is the coolest thing that just happened to me.  I'm sitting outside on the front porch of the Wesley Foundation, writing this e-letter, and one of my students walks by from one of my classes.  We just had the coolest conversation about faith.  It's not something we can talk about in class, in a secular university.  But as he reminded me, it is something we can live.  You and I are living words of Scripture.  We can live in such a way that people who are in the world and of the world will look into our lives and see a different quality there than what they experience personally.  It is true that when we "abide in Christ" that abiding has a tangilble expression in how we live our lives.  Boy this excites me so much.  I love seeing the power of the gospel really become good news for people. 

When I lived in Florida, I was an associate pastor at a large church.  I led a weekly ladies prayer group affectionately known as "the Naggy Ladies."  (Someone else named us, but we liked the name and kept it).  As one person put it, we nagged God until something happened.  The thing that so inspired me about these dear friends is that we would leave our prayer time and each of them would go into their lives in the secular world.  Some of them taught school, some worked in insurance agencies, some worked in very profit oriented businesses.  Each of them had to live out the majority of their lives on, what I like to call, the front lines.  What continued to amaze me in all the years we met and prayed together was how powerfully God used each of them as change agents in the circumstances they lived in.  And our little prayer group began to get a reputation.  People who would never step foot inside a church began to ask each of the ladies to pray for them or specific needs in their lives.  God used each of them to bring the light of Christ to dark corners of the world.  Indeed each of them were living Scriptures that shared the hope of Christ in tangible ways.  What is even coolest of all is that they are still doing it today.

As I live and breathe and work as a campus minister at Western Kentucky University, I find myself in the same position my dear Florida ladies were and are in.  As I meet students in all different places and circumstances on campus, I get to share the gospel on the front lines.  Often not by preaching.  But by trying to live in a Christ like way.  I really do admire and envy students who are people of faith.  You my friends are able to do this in ways that I can only imagine, because your whole lives are steeped in the front lines.  I want to say to you, do not be discouraged.  Just live the Christ light within you.  You are here for a purpose.  And you can be a vessel of good news poured out for others, even when you have to be careful about how you share it.  Live it first.  And know that by living it you are initiating that hunger and thirst within others to have that Christ light within them to.  And they will not go long without asking why you are the way you are or how to get what you've got.  This is what it means to be salt and light.

Know that Jesus loves you, and I do too.

Blessings,

Sami

Sami Wilson
Campus Minsiter/Director
WKU Wesley Foundation
United Methodist Campus Ministry
842-2880


 

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