Dear Friends,

Hope you are staying dry on this rainy day! At least it is starting to warm up. It snowed here for the Easter weekend. Nothing like hunting eggs in a snow storm! Wow. Tomorrow night we will be hosting a movie night on South Lawn. Come and join us for dinner at the Wesley Foundation at 6:30pm and then trot down the hill to enjoy "Cars" on the side of the Academic Complex (about 7:30pm). In case of rain we will just watch at it at the Foundation. Otherwise bring a blanket and crash (ha, ha) on the lawn.
Now For Sami's Ramblings About Jesus: Last night I got the rare privilege of watching TV with my wonderful husband Tim. Boston Legal was on. It always makes me think. The episode revolved around the theme of love and how to experience love we must make ourselves vulnerable to others. In order to love we must accept the risk that vulnerability brings, but in rejecting risk we also condemn ourselves to loneliness. We reject the one thing we were made for. The choice to love and be loved always brings risk. But it is riskier still to not love at all.

I laid in bed last night thinking of love, God, and Easter. It is incredible and wonderful to me to think about God, maker and ruler of the universe, risking everything to love us. Isn't that what the incarnation is all about? Jesus, the one who is "the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation" (Colossians 1:15-16), became flesh and walked among us as a man, a human man, a flesh and blood person who wept and laughed and cried and everything we do as humans. It is so easy to think, "surely the Divine Being would not become something as vulnerable as human?" And yet He did. And then it is so easy to think, "surely God as human wouldn't be subject to the kinds of inconveniences and discomforts that most humans endure." And yet He says of himself, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head" (Matthew 8:20). And then it is so easy to think, "but surely the Most High God would not permit Himself to suffer and experience the deepest of human misery." And yet Jesus's life as a man ends on a cross. Wow.

What complete and utter vulnerability. God in Jesus risked everything to love us, and experienced real loss in the process. It is a shocking God we follow as people of faith. Which one of us when faced with that kind of loss up front would risk loving to begin with? And yet Jesus does.

What I love is that death does not have the last word. A few years back the song "Arise My Love" was released. It tells the story of Easter morning from God's perspective. In the early morning hours God's light breaks forth and calls Jesus back to life. God's love risks complete vulnerability, is vulnerable even to death, and then rises forth to new resurrected life that is forever beyond the grasp of death. It is like the sweet words of Solomon: "Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; for love is strong as death, passion fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, a raging flame." (Song of Songs 8:6)

I love that love has the last word. That love lives, even in the midst of the worst life brings; love lives. In all my years of being alive, being a pastor, being a campus minister I have only seen one real need in people's lives: the need to experience real love. And Jesus is the love that lasts and has the last word. It is the real word we all need to hear. It never matters how deep the wounds are that I have seen (and felt). The hunger is always to experience love. And His love is so longing to fill us up. He even went to the cross to give it. I'm just so glad it didn't stay there. So how about some resurrection love? Jesus loves you. He meets you where you are (no matter where that is) and moves you where He is. . . . To new life. It's why we do what we do. We just want you to know you are loved.

Blessings, Sami 


Rev. Sami Wilson
Campus Minister/Director

WKU Wesley Foundation
1355 College St.
Bowling Green, KY 42101
(270) 842-2880