In-Between Times--Wesley Foundation E-letter (Methodist Campus Ministry)

Dear Friends,

 

Hope you are all doing well.  It is that crazy time of year again as we get closer to finals.  Just think, in three weeks we will have crossed the finish line.  Yay!!!!  This has been a wonderful journey together.  I think you all are the best travel companions!

 

Hey, tomorrow is Stresstivus on South Lawn from 11am till 4pm.  We will be set up as a part of it with the prayer labyrinth.  Come and hang out; it will be so fun, and it will relieve stress!!!

 

Here’s stuff coming up.  Tonight is worship 6:30.  Come for a time of reflecting on the ways God has come to life for us this school year.  Thursday is free food, again at 6:30pm.  The elders are coming to share their wisdom!  It will be so cool to be with them.  Also, we will begin a time of OFFICER ELECTIONS.  Come and find out what that is all about!

 

Important end of the year stuff:

 

LADIES TEA PARTY—this Sunday at my house at 6pm.  I will give directions on Thursday night.  Email me and let me know if you plan on being there.  This is one of my most favorite things we do.  Please come and be a part of it!

 

MEN’S BBQ—This will be on Thursday, May 14^th, again at my house.  I promise to provide just as much chocolate fondue as at the tea party.  Lots of fun, I promise.  Again, let me know if you plan on being there!

 

FINALS LUNCHES—We will provide free lunch on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of finals week.  Bring a friend and fill your tummy! 

 

JOE’S CRAB SHACK ROAD TRIP—Friday of Finals week we will car pool to Nashville.  Oh Yeah!

 

SENIOR STUFF—Next Tuesday & Thursday—Come and help us celebrate Kelly’s journey!

 

Now For Sami’s Ramblings About Jesus:

 

Time is such an interesting concept this time of year, especially as the end of the semester draws nearer.  There is a sense of burden and sometimes panic that seems to hang in the air as students juggle their obligations with approaching deadlines, due dates, and finals.  It is a crazy time, and most of us begin to feel crazy as the demands of our lives levy a pull upon our energy, thoughts, and emotions.  We come away feeling drained and depleted, needing to be filled back up.

 

There is also a sense of impatience.  I keenly remember it even from grade school as an intense longing for summer vacation (a time of rest and play) that increases with each moment.  It is that all-together different time where one can breathe easy and restore balance to living.  Never was this longing so intense as those moments that also brought great transition to life, a moving on or a moving up.  I am remembering graduations, marriage, ordinations, etc.  Momentous times when far-off goals are suddenly near, but never near enough.  As I write this I think fondly of Kelly, our graduating senior.

 

At some point in our lives, each one of us will be stuck in an in-between-ness, where we long to move forward at a rapid pace, but must continue on in a daily-ness that can seem almost painful because it is so slow, so routine.  Movement seems to have disappeared completely and we find ourselves wondering if time will ever move again.  We know that life is meant for more, but we just can’t get to that precious “more” yet.  We feel figuratively and literally stuck.

 

I am reminded of the scripture quoted so often at momentous times:  Jeremiah 29:11.  In it the Lord says, “For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.”  It’s one of those famous Bible verses; you can walk into any Christian bookstore and find all kinds of merchandise printed with those words.  But rarely does anyone mention the verses that come before it.  In Jeremiah 29:10 we find God saying, “Only when Babylon’s seventy years are completed will I visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place.”  And here is the paradox that God’s people and many of us live in:  Life exacts patience from us the very moment we discover that life as we know it is not what we are meant for.  There is purpose to delay.  I’m still trying to figure out what that is, but I know it to be true.  And I know that we have the opportunity to discover God’s greatest mercies, in fact God’s greatest miracles, in the waiting.

 

Go back with me a few more verses.  God is speaking to His people about their exile in Babylon.  Yes, they are ultimately destined for the Promised Land, but in the meantime, God intends for them to sojourn in a foreign land.  Hear the tender words of grace:  “Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce.  Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease.  But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare” (Jeremiah 29:5-7).  It is from the sojourn in Babylon that God’s people produce their greatest heroes, and our most important examples of faith.  Remember Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego?  How about Daniel and the lion’s den?  What about Esther?  These powerful stories of God’s power and deliverance were born in a time and place when God’s people wanted to be somewhere else.  It makes me wonder what God can do with our in-between times as well?  What would we be missing out on if we just hurried on to the next thing and never lived well these in-between days that we live in?  The real truth of the matter is that these moments offer us a kind of grace that no other moments can, and when they are gone, they are gone forever, as well as the opportunities and gifts they bring.

 

I offer these thoughts as a way of affirming that our in-between moments are fleeting.  We think we want the semester over and done with, this chapter closed for the rest of our lives.  But there are gifts in these days that we can enjoy only while they last.  And I hate to miss out on a party, no matter where God is hosting it.  So join me in taking a few moments every day to enjoy the gift that “today” is.  It may not be where we ultimately want to be, but even in these moments of in-between, God is longing to bless us.  Let us look for the blessing hidden in our longing.

 

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

 

Beauty in Unlikely Places--Wesley Foundation E-Letter (Methodist Campus Ministry)

Hello Everyone!!!! Hope you are all very blessed.  We had a fantastic time at Mt. Union UMC on Sunday morning.  I am so proud of all of our students who went.  It was such a blessing.  This week we go out again to Christ UMC on Wednesday (meet at Wesley @ 5pm) and to Faith UMC on Sunday (meet at Wesley @ 8am).  It will be so cool!!!!!

 

Remember we have worship tonight at 6:30pm and then a free meal and Bible Study on Thursday, again at 6:30pm.

 

Are there any of you out there who would be interested in putting together a 3 person team (or several) to play in a basketball tournament at Christ UMC on Saturday, May 2?  Let me know.  They could also use help setting up too.  Very cool!

 

Now For Sami’s Ramblings About Jesus:

 

 

Yesterday Tim and I stepped out of Kroger’s on Scottsville road and saw the most beautiful rainbow.  It stretched all the way across the sky.   It was amazing.  So beautiful.  It was hard not to stop and stare at it as we were making our way back to the car.  And is was also kind of cool to hear the gasps coming from others as they stepped outside for the first time.  It was kind of a validation that we had witnessed something impressive.  Others noticed it too. 

 

As we made our way home, I kept trying to get a good picture of it before it faded, and before the road veered toward a different direction.  Here’s the best picture I got:

 

 

This is the best one I got.  I hated it that it’s in a parking lot, and the view is obscured by traffic lights, billboard signs, and the golden arches.  But then I began to reflect upon the significance of God’s grace.  God doesn’t just choose pretty landscapes to reveal His glory.  And He certainly does not reserve His grace for only those lives that are already well ordered and pretty.  In fact, Jesus makes it very clear that He comes to those who need him.  In response to the Pharisees he says, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.  Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’  For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners” (Matthew 9:12-13).  So why should I complain that God’s beautiful sign of promise appears in the midst of an ugly human landscape?  Isn’t that where it is needed most?

 

I love that it also means that things in my life don’t have be perfect for the hand of God to begin to move in them.  Often, that is when I need to see glimpses of God the most, when I feel most desperate, most separated from His love, and the most surrounded by the fallout from my own mistakes.  It’s like we all need to be able to look around at the debris of our lives and say, “Yeah, I’m responsible for that, but I see that His mercy is bigger than the mistake that got me here.” 

 

Recently I watched a movie starring Antonio Bandares called Take the Lead.  It is the story of a dance instructor who is moved to begin teaching ballroom dancing to students in an inner-city high school who are relegated to detention in the basement.  There comes this moment when his regular dance students confront these street wise kids and basically tell them their efforts are worthless and don’t amount to anything.  The inner-city kids are dejected, ready to give up.  They feel Banderes has fed them, a bunch of “rejects,” a pack of lies, and that he should just give up too.  And then he says to them, “I don’t see rejects.  I see choices that have yet to be made.”  He tells them that excelling does take work, but they have it within them to choose excellence.  Isn’t that good news?  Isn’t that the hope we all need to hear?  That our lives are not determined by the mistakes of our past but by our ability to allow something better to take root?  That’s what a rainbow over McDonald’s means to me.  It feels like God saying, “You may have given up on yourself, your dreams, your life, but I haven’t given up on you.  And I can show up in the most un-likeliest places.”

 

As we complete another semester together, let’s remember that we are still in the season of Easter.  It is still a time to reflect on the amazing ability to God to turn things around in our lives in un-mistakable and even un-likely ways.  God is not bound by any human condition.  In fact even death is not a hindrance to Him.  He promises to make all things new (Revelations 21:5).  And as you finish the next few weeks, remember that He is with you, and He is completely able to work in any circumstance you have.  You just have to allow Him.  He has a rainbow for you too.

 

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

 

Reason to Hope Again--Wesley Foundation E-letter (Methodist Campus Ministry)

Hey everyone!  I hope you had a fantastic Easter weekend.  It was just so good to be with family and remember God’s goodness.  Now it’s time to jump back into the craziness of a semester speeding toward conclusion!  Let’s all hang on for a wild ride!

 

This Tuesday night at 6:30pm we will conclude our look at the armor of God.  Join us for a message on the Sword of the Spirit.  In the armor this is the only offensive weapon God gives us.  Find out what it is so important, and so powerful. 

 

Also on Thursday night at 6:30pm we will eat FREE FOOD, and we will talk about the message we want to bring to local congregations as we tell them about the Wesley Foundation.  Come ready to sing and celebrate all the good things God is doing! 

 

This Sunday we travel to Mount Union UMC to sing and share.  Meet at the Wesley Foundation at 9:15am.

 

Now For Sami’s Ramblings About Jesus:

 

I have just finished a book called The Centurion’s Wife.  It is the fascinating story of a centurion who is assigned by Pilate to discover the truth behind the missing body of Jesus following His crucifixion.  As a reward for his services the centurion is promised the hand of Pilate’s niece who lives as a servant within Pilate’s house.  Specifically this young woman is the handmaiden to Pilate’s wife, who sends her on a similar mission, asking her to befriend Jesus’ followers as a way to understand why she is troubled by dreams of the dead prophet and whether they are planning to revolt against Rome.  The journey of discovery that both pursue lead them to a faith they never imagined.  But it also reveals the story of the first believers and how they experienced the baffling events of the crucifixion, resurrection, and eventually Pentecost.

 

What intrigues me most about the story is how it brings a fresh insight to the events of the resurrection.  For many of us we have heard the story so often that its implausibility is lost to us.  Of course Jesus was crucified.  Of course on the third day He rose from the dead.  Of course He ascended into heaven.  Of course He gave us His Holy Spirit so that we might know His presence with us always.  These are things we take for granted.  But could you imagine the shock and impact that these events had upon those who actually lived through them?  They had no way of knowing what would come next or what the implications would be.  They were immersed in a sea of confusion, impossibility, and faith-full waiting.

 

It is also a hope-filled waiting because the tragedy of Holy Week has been transfigured into the triumph of hope.  I love that.  I love that Jesus has a way of taking our most desperate moments and making them beautiful reasons for celebration and praise.  I don’t know how He does it; He just does.  It is the power of resurrection that remains alive within Him.  He resurrects all kinds of things.  Just when we think all hope is gone, and there is no basis for believing anymore, Jesus gives us a reason to hope again and legitimizes our belief. 

 

This to me is the miracle of Easter:  the God who seemed so distant during our black Good Friday legitimizes our belief with Sunday morning, in ways we could not have foreseen or even have had the good sense to hope for.  The Easter experience of resurrection is so far out of our sphere of imagination, we don’t even know how to ask for it, yet in God’s tender love and mercy He gives it to us anyway.  Eventually God makes the basis for our faith legitimate.  Hebrews 11:1 says, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”  Did you get that?  This is powerful!  Eventually our God-inspired faith finds its fulfillment in things that ACTUALLY come to pass.  Our faith in Christ is not baseless.  While Jesus asks us to trust Him, it is not without good reason, and it is also not without proof.  It’s just that the proof comes later.  We can trust that He wouldn’t ask us to trust Him if He knows that evidence of our faith won’t come at all.  Could you imagine what it must have been like for those early disciples when they finally got it?  When they finally understood that He meant what He said?  That when he predicted His own death the part about His rising again was just as real?  That moment of recognition must have changed everything for them.  In fact it did.  They go on to become fearless messengers of the good news that Jesus is alive to us all. 

 

So I find this truth to be at work:  We cannot always prevent, escape, or get out of our Good Friday’s, but the power Easter Sunday morning is still working within us.  We just have to wait to see it come to life.

 

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

 

Hope in Desperate Places--Wesley Foundation e-letter (Methodist Campus Ministry)

Hey folks!  Hope all is well with you!  We still have a lot going on this semester.  Our outreach season is getting ready to launch.  Next week after worship on Tuesday and during program on Thursday we will put together exactly what we will be doing for the churches we will be visiting.  Our outreach schedule is as follows:

 

Sunday, April 19^th—Mt. Union UMC

Wednesday, April 22—Christ UMC

Sunday, April 26^th—Faith UMC

 

I know God will bless each of these outings, and give us the grace to share boldly the wonderful things He is doing in and through this ministry.  Come and join us as we share.  It will be fun!

 

Thursday night is our free meal and program.  Remember to meet at Wesley at 6:30pm for dinner.  Around 7:10pm we will walk together up to Garrett ballroom where we will get to experience the Veritas Forum.  This is going to be amazing!  Dr. Fritz Schaeffer will be talking about how faith and science, and sharing how God is working through both.  I’m so excited for it!  Been praying for it for a long time!!!!

 

Now For Sami’s Ramblings About Jesus:

 

We are officially in the middle of Holy Week.  Since February this is what the whole season of Lent has been preparing us for: a time to focus on the journey Christ took to the cross.  It continues to be a part of the Christian year that brings me the most puzzlement and pondering.  I mean, I get the whole baby in a manger thing.  It’s so easy to cozy up to the warm images of Mary and Joseph staring with breathless wonder at the infant Jesus.  And Easter morning is cool.  It’s like the lilies are trumpeting out the joyful news that death has been demolished, while the smell of heaven wafts through the pews.  Who can’t get excited about that?  Of course the new Easter outfit helps.  And so does the whole, let’s look for eggs thing.  But Holy Week?  That one is so hard to understand.

 

Some people skip Holy Week all together.  They go straight from palm branch Hosanna’s to Easter morning Hallelujah’s.  I can’t seem to do that.  I guess it is because too much of my life seems to resonate with the uncertainty of Jesus’s journey to the cross.  There are too many unanswered questions in my life to ignore the one week in Christ’s earthly life where unanswered questions just hung in the air, especially the one that goes, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?”.   Sure we know that Easter is on the other side.  But the disciples did not.  His mother did not.  He even felt so staggered by the weight of what was to transpire that He begged His heavenly Father to make it go away.  In the middle of the darkest moments of Jesus’s life, answers just don’t come.

 

And that is why I have hope.  Hear Rainer Maria Rilke’s words to a novice poet seeking direction: 

 

I would like to beg of you, dear friend, as well as I can, to have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart.  Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language.  Do not now look for the answers.  They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them.  It is a question of experiencing everything.  At present you need to live the question.  Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.

 

I have hope because I can hear the comforting words of Christ in the words above, comfort that comes from having to live through a hopeless experience, not being able to rush it, not being able to change it, but simply and courageously living it, listening to it, and allowing its story to bring its own answers to light, in its own time.  It gives me hope because it shows me that Jesus lived into the answer He was longing for, that the whole creation was longing for, one simple moment at a time.  And I know when I struggle, when I can’t find satisfying answers, His presence is right there living the questions with me until moment by moment that longed for answer begins to emerge. 

 

And this is the hope of Holy Week that I offer to you.  All of us have those things that we wish we could be done with already.  All of us have those moments that leave us begging God, “Make it go away!”  All of us have those experiences that demand all we have to give and more.  And the reason I cling to the hope of Holy Week is because in any given excruciating moment there is a Savior standing with us.  One who has been there, and literally done that.  One who knows what it means to endure through until something gives.  One who does not offer glib reassurances but who waits it out with us, bringing a deep compassion and quiet strength that helps us make it through too.  This is why I need the message of Holy Week.  I need to know that my Savior knows my heart, especially when it is breaking.

 

He knows your heart too.  In the midst of your pain and uncertainty, He gives you His own broken heart fully and completely, so that yours may be healed.  Moment by moment.  Patiently resolving within you all the questions that leave you aching, until the answers you’ve been longing for are there in your midst.

 

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

 

Seed Life Planted Here--Wesley Foundation E-letter (Methodist Campus Ministry)

Dear Friends,

 

Hope all is doing well!  Isn’t it beautiful outside?  It is so good to just sit in the sunshine.  Let’s all agree we’ll take a moment to let the sun shine on us today!  I’m in! 

 

Hopefully you are having a good week.  Remember to bring your CANNED GOODS to the Wesley Foundation to participate in the campus wide food drive sponsored by CSF to help restore the food levels at our local help missions.  This is such an important ministry.  Also, tonight is FREE FOOD, and our program.  Tonight we finish up with our study of the parable of the soils.  We will really look at what it means to be fruitful.  You also may want to come by and look at the Chapel.  It got painted as a part of our work day last weekend, and it looks really good!  Who knew that “butternut” was such an amazing color?

 

Now For Sami’s Ramblings About Jesus:

 

On the window seal in our bathroom at home sit a couple of terra cotta pots.  They measure about two inches high, an inch and half wide.  And growing within them are several tiny shamrock sprouts.  While I was gone on spring break I arranged for my boys to have little gifts to open everyday, so they wouldn’t feel so far away from me.  I picked up the little pots at Target, complete with dehydrated soil, a seed pack, and instructions.  A couple of weeks ago the boys and I carefully added water to the dehydrated soil pellet, mixed it into each pot, separated out the recommended number of seeds, and placed them in the reconstituted soil, with a light blanket of dirt on top.  Every day we go to window seal to see how our “potted plants” are doing.

 

It’s quite amazing really.  Since I only paid a dollar each for them, I wasn’t expecting much.  But it has been pretty cool to see little green clovers poking their way through the dirt, seeking the sunlight, drinking in the water that little boys slosh all over them.  I am reminded of Christ’s words about faith as a grain of mustard seed.  Even though it is the smallest of all the seeds, it grows into some more shrub!  I believe clover seed is smaller still.  How cool is it that something so tiny could have so much life in it?  And that its life could spring up so quickly given the right conditions?

 

It makes me ponder once again the mystery and majesty of Easter.  Jesus also said of seeds that it is only when they die to their seed life, and are buried, that they can experience the true life they were created for in the beginning.  Of course He was referring to Himself, and trying to help His disciples understand that He too must die so that something greater could be born.  They couldn’t see past their limited perspective that dying to His earthly life was actually a wonderful, marvelous thing.  And tougher still was their understanding when He suggested that they also had to die to life as they knew it for His life to take root in them.  It’s crazy, but true.  We have to let go of the penny we hold tightly in our hands so that we can receive the vast treasure He holds in His.  But we will never have enough room in our hearts for His gifts if we cling stubbornly to what is already within our grasp.

 

Have you ever wondered what life is like for a seed?  It grows within the bloom of the plant that produces it, it is harvested, packaged, and then sits around dormant.  For months.  For years.  Maybe forever.  It is almost unbearable to consider that it was created for more, and yet the more that it was made for has to be delayed indefinitely, because packaging takes precedence over dirt.  I wonder how many of us are like the seeds that get relegated to indefinite packaging instead of dying to the seed life and finding the life we were made for?  I mean, I can understand the objections.  Dying to a self-directed life is kind of scary.  We are definitely trading the known for the unknown.  And for all the control freaks out there this is utmost in unbearable.  Of course it sucks when our lives are no longer neatly packaged and predictable.  Of course it is way neater, less messy, to have pretty flower pictures on our package, than to actually have to get dirty and grow real ones.  But holy cow, where is the fun in that?  Where is the adventure?  Where is the amazing fragrance and beauty that makes others stop and look and appreciate God’s handiwork?  I would much rather spend my days being a reckless, unpredictable, living work of grace than a lifeless picture of what might have been. 

 

Yeah.  That’s really how I feel. 

 

So as we draw closer to Easter, let us remember once again the journey that Jesus made to the cross.  Let us also remember that the cross has a claim on us too.  Just as He gave His life to us, we are invited to give our lives to Him, to let Him direct their course and flow.  I know He is so gentle in His invitation, and so generous in the love and understanding that champions every step forward we take to dying to the seed life within us so that REAL LIFE can be born.  I know He cheers for us when we get up, disregarding our clumsy attempts that make us fall.  He really only wants our best, and is fully equipped to give it to us if we let Him.  Let’s let Him.

 

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