Monday, March 23, 2009

The Best Things In Life Can't Be Ruined By the Economy--Wesley Foundation Eletter (Methodist Campus Minsitry)

Hello everyone!  Hope you had a great weekend!  This week as we gather together, lets remember to bring some canned goods for local food banks.  This is a small way we can impact people’s lives with God’s grace.  Thanks to CSF for organizing it!  They rock!

 

As we look ahead we have some cool stuff coming up.  Next Monday night at 6:30pm in Garret room 301 there will be a prayer gathering for the Veritas event coming up on April 9th.  This will be an opportunity to gather with folks from other campus ministries to pray for and with each other, and especially about this joint effort to share Jesus with our campus.  On April 9th we will be hosting Dr. Fritz Schaefer, chemistry professor from the University of Georgia.  He will be speaking on the topic of “The Big Bang, Stephen Hawking, and God.”  The whole aim of this event is to engage people on our campus in a way that shows how faith in God and a love for science can coexist.  There is a meeting on Thursday at 4pm at CSF to involve students in the planning and implementation of this event. If you are interested in attending on behalf of the Wesley Foundation, please let me know.

 

Again we have a great week planned, filled with worship Tuesday night at 6:30pm and free food and a program at 6:30 on Thursday.  Our theme for worship on Tuesday is the shield of faith, how exercising our faith is so important in our lives, how to have it and how to use it.  Thursday night we will continue to look at the parable of the soil and learn how to get rid of those pesky weeds and thorns.  See you soon!

 

Now For Sami’s Ramblings About Jesus:

 

A few years back Nicholas Cage starred in a movie called “The Family Man.”  It is the story of a man who lives life in the fast lane, has everything imaginable that he could possibly want, is wealthy beyond his dreams, and is thoroughly miserable.  Even while surrounded by opulence that only copious amounts of money can provide, he is haunted by memories of his first love and what might have been if he had chosen love over the ladder of success.  As the movie progresses he has an encounter with a mysterious individual who grants him a glimpse of what could have been if he had chosen love.  This glimpse reveals a life far different from the one he lives, filled with a humble house, mini-vans, penny pinching, and sparse living.  But at the same time he discovers the joy of belonging, a wife who loves him unconditionally, children who bring laughter, and the kind of happiness he had been longing for all along.

 

If you haven’t seen this movie, I would recommend it, especially at a time like this.  I believe that the gospel, or good news, can be wrapped in a video box.  Because this movie comes with a message that the things in life most precious to us can never be bought in a store.  I am reminded of Tim’s and my first two years of marriage.  I was a full-time seminary student in Lexington, Kentucky.  I was a part-time youth minister at a small church.  He was in graduate school at UK working on a masters, also working part-time.  We had a crazy-high rent that we paid for a tiny apartment on campus at the seminary; it made a dorm room look spacious.  I believe the only reason we ate was because Tim’s parents fed us every weekend, and then sent food home with us to nourish us during the week.  I’ve tried to add it up in my head; I don’t know how we made it.

 

But as financially strapped as we were, I have very fond memories of that time.  We would take long walks together down-town.  One of our favorite dates was to walk to the public library and check out books.  Sometimes we would stop at a Mexican food stand on the sidewalk and get these amazing chimichangas, cheap.  Our big night out was to splurge and go to Fazzoli’s.  In those lean times we learned how to love each other well when times are tough and it doesn’t come easy.  And that love has sustained us for almost thirteen years.  It’s kind of funny now that both of us would love to take leisurely walks hand in hand.  We could for about five seconds.  And then reality would hit and we would both be chasing little boys, trying to keep up.

 

All this is to say that the life God promises does not come with a price tag attached.  It is available in any economy, and it survives any stock market crash.  In the gospel of Luke, Jesus sent out his disciples two by two, and said, “Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals.”  Just a couple of paragraphs later it says, “The seventy returned with joy.”  Did you see that?  I never noticed it before today.  It is almost as if Jesus is proving Himself to them by asking them to rely totally on His provision, leaving behind their own efforts of self-sufficiency.  And He indeed provided!  We don’t know how, or through whom, or in what measure, but undoubtedly they returned to him not needing to complain.  There was no room for complaint because His joy had filled them up.

 

The point is that we can trust God.  God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.  Governments may change, stocks come crashing down, politicians and elected officials can disappoint us.  Even education, church, and family cannot provide the stability we long for.  We are really hungry only for Him.  And only He can satisfy.  We can even be surrounded by the stability that worldly success can provide and still be devastatingly empty.  So in this crunch time, let Jesus be it for you, your all in all.  He is able out of the storehouses of His love and provision to meet your every need, teach you to be wise, and fill you with unmistakable joy, regardless of what wall street says.  I believe our country’s current financial crisis is, at its heart, another opportunity for God to show off.

 

This is me trusting,

 

Sami

 

To subscribe or unsubscribe to the Wesley Foundation Weekly E-Letter List go to:

http://lists.wku.edu/mailman/listinfo/wesley

 

Sami Wilson

Campus Minister/Director

WKU Wesley Foundation

United Methodist Campus Ministry

270-842-2880

sami.wilson@wku.edu

 

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Somebody fed me on our Mission Trip--How Cool! Wesley Foundation E-letter (Methodist Campus Ministry)

Hellooooooo!  I hope each of you had an amazing spring break!  It is good to be back in town.  I can’t wait to swap stories of our crazy adventures!  Can anyone say Chevy Chase and National Lampoon’s Vacation?

 

Anyway, this week we are back to our regular schedule.  Worship tonight at 6:30pm.  And Thursday we will have a free meal and program.  Justine Pile will also be there to discuss specifics of Relay for Life.  There is much to do as we prepare!  Also, we are participating in a campus wide food drive.  Our brothers and sisters from CSF are implementing it as a way to rebuild food pantries after the terrible ice storms this winter.  So bring non-perishable items to worship or free meal night.  We will do this each week until the end of the semester.  This is an easy way to share God’s love with someone else!

 

Also we will have small groups this week too!

 

Now For Sami’s Ramblings About Jesus:

 

It is good to be back home in Bowling Green.  Like many others I spent Spring Break on the road. And traveling can be such a weary business.  However, one of the truths that became evident while we were away was that being on a journey is as exhilarating as it is exhausting.  All of us who were on our Spring Break mission trip could testify that we were blessed in the going.  How thankful I am for the experience. 

 

This morning in my quiet time I discovered the following quote from a journal article: 

 

Perhaps Jesus’ knowledge of road lessons compelled him to send the twelve disciples on a journey through villages (Luke 9:1-6, NRSV).  He “gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal.”  Although given “power and authority,” they needed something more; the needed to rely upon hospitality and its possibilities. . . .  Being dependent and vulnerable is how disciples come to experience God’s sustenance through community. . . .  He insisted that they rely upon the communities that awaited them.  They needed to give hospitality a chance to flourish (Weavings:  The Road.  “At Home on the Road,” by Luther E. Smith, Jr.  p.10).

 

Luther Smith must really dig mission trips with college students!  Or else he has an insight into the nature to stepping out in faith to serve God in places far removed from “home.”  What he describes is just what we experienced.  The whole way we found ourselves drifting between two extremes of a paradox.  On the one had we had left the comfort of home to serve, to share Jesus with those whose paths we intersected.  On the other hand we were served by the hands and feet of Christ who provided the comforts of home in order to enable our service for Him.  As much as we were a face of compassion for others as we went out, each day we were bathed in the compassion of hospitality that attended generously to our needs.

 

We never know which we will be called upon to give, yet both kinds of service are interwoven into the fabric of the Kingdom of Heaven.  At each church we stayed at we were received with joy.  We received home cooked breakfasts, lunches to sustain us on the road, and company eager to hear the stories of our adventures when we returned.  Each day we ventured out to share the love of Jesus with people we didn’t know, in all kinds of ways.  Sometimes it meant knocking on doors and offering prayer to strangers; sometimes it meant holding a baby or playing with a special needs toddler; sometimes it meant hanging dry wall and offering prayers of encouragement for a family we will never meet, and sometimes it meant giving food to a homeless person and seeing them as a child of God instead of a stranger to be avoided.  Each day God offered us an opportunity to experience giving away His love in a new way.  And each night God surrounded us with the body of Christ, ministering to our weary bodies so that the next day we would be refreshed and able to serve again.

 

When I hear Jesus say in the gospels, “Behold, the Kingdom of God is at hand,” I believe this is what He was talking about.  Every moment is a chance to leave the ordinary self-seclusion of safety and step into the adventure of love that is ready to participate in God redeeming the whole world.  And every moment God invites us to participate in redeeming our corner of it.  Extraordinary love looks quite ordinary.  In fact, making beds, serving lunches, offering smiles and encouragements are things we do everyday.  It’s just that we do these things for ourselves and those we are comfortable with.  What makes love extraordinary is when we offer it to folks we don’t normally do such things for, even those we see everyday and we’d rather not do them for.  I believe the miracle of transforming the world is not that amazing things happen as much as God enables amazing generosity in us human beings who are so conditioned to just take care of our own.

 

Driving to work this morning I saw the following bumper sticker:  “Welcome to America.  Now speak English or leave.”  Something in my heart broke when I read that.  I could never imagine Jesus saying that to one of His children that He painstakingly knit together in its mother’s womb.  I am so thankful that our hosts last week did not say things like that to me.  So often we will encounter people who don’t have what it takes to live up to someone else’s expectations.  And we are faced with a choice:  will we love and enter into a redeeming relationship with them through the power of God’s love, or will we demand they be like us and throw them away when they aren’t?  Will we have the courage to allow Jesus to shape our response?  Will we become a community where hospitality has a chance to flourish?

 

This is me trusting,

 

Sami

 

To subscribe or unsubscribe to the Wesley Foundation Weekly E-Letter List go to:

http://lists.wku.edu/mailman/listinfo/wesley

 

Sami Wilson

Campus Minister/Director

WKU Wesley Foundation

United Methodist Campus Ministry

270-842-2880

sami.wilson@wku.edu