Dear Friends,
Hope you are all staying warm on this cold evening. The Super Bowl party was great fun Sunday night. For those who missed it, we will try to have another sports and chilli get together for the NCAA Basketball championship game. Come on down for another night of mayhem.
We are also beginning a new Ladies Bible Study. Meet at the Wesley Foundation at 11:30am on Thursdays.
Tonight at Solid Rock Cafe' we will be having hot food and good fun. We will be talking about listening to God. I mean, how is it possible to know what God wants for us and from us? Together we'll find out. Join us at 6:30pm at the Wesley Foundation.
Enough announcements.....
Now for Sami's Ramblings About Jesus:
Ever been lost? There's a hit TV show by that name. I don't know that I've ever been lost like that before, but immediately what comes to mind is shopping with my mother as a child. When I was a small girl, and even a teenager and college student, I loved to shop. And anytime my mother and I would go shopping (the mall, Wal-mart, wherever) I had a tendency to get pre-occupied with stuff she wasn't interested in. I would wander off, first just a few feet, being sure to keep her in sight. Then I would go a little farther. I would stay gone a little longer. And then before I knew it, she was no where in sight, and I couldn't find her. I can still feel that pit of the stomach sickness that would kick in the moment I realized I was . . . . lost.
Yes, these were the days before cell phones.
How many of us could say, "Been there; done that"? It's so easy to get lost. It just takes the lure of a minute second of diverted attention, the itch to just check something out, the hook of becoming engrossed, and then the sickening realization that finding one's way back is more than difficult; it begins to look and feel impossible. It happens in so many different ways, times, and places. It even happens to responsible individuals. It even happens to persons of faith. It can happen anytime we wander off and take our focus away from where it is supposed to be.
Rather than focus on the many ways we wander off, I want to encourage us to think of the One who is always ready to find us. Back in the day, my mom didn't always know where to find me. Sometimes I'd be in Wal-mart and hear my name on the loudspeaker. But God always knows right where we are, even when we think we've wandered off from Him. It's true that we can so run away with our choices that it is hard for us to think about Him, much less see His presence in our lives. But even if we are lost from God, God is never lost from us.
The thing that gives me hope more than anything else is the realization that God sees us and He wants to connect with us. All I have to do to experience this is to stop running from Him, and to start running to him. To begin to make different choices about how I spend my time, who I spend it with. It is really as simple as redirecting my gaze to Him. One of the most powerful statements of this truth came on the night we went to see Maya Angelou speak last semester. After she was raped as a child, she chose not to speak for many years. But then one day she dared to speak so that the poetry she loved so much could come alive. This is what she said about that day: "I found that I had left my voice, but my voice did not leave me." All she had to do to reclaim that lost part of herself was to speak again.
Just like all we have to do be found is to stop running away and start looking for the Lord, because He is always looking at us. (Since He never loses us, He never has to look for us.) I love that part of Psalm 23 that says, "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life." Goodness and mercy do follow us as surely as the eyes of the Lord follow us every step we take. And if we just stop walking away from them, they bump right into us. How painfully God longs to embrace us with love, and yet we seldom let Him. We think if He follows us at all it is with retribution. Really He is following us with love and longing, wanting only to heal us of the wounds we found in lostness.
My friends, join me in not being lost anymore. Let's just be found. By God. And His amazing goodness.
Blessings,
Sami
Rev. Sami Wilson
Campus Minister/Director
WKU Wesley Foundation
1355 College St.
Bowling Green, KY 42101
(270) 842-2880
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