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Is there anything more glorious than a crisp autumn day? As the leaves start to change and the time for cozy sweaters arrives, I feel an electric charge in the air. The sky seems extra vivid in her blues, the clouds look fluffier than usual, and the moon shines bright as can be.
St. Francis of Assisi said "The world is a great stage on which God displays His many wonders." I love how the beauty of nature points to the glory of God and can be experienced in an almost mystical way, when we pay attention.
But here on earth, we can't always count on good weather.
By the time this reflection is published, a storm may rage in. Soon, our beautiful leaves will fall to the ground, and we will face the challenge of a Midwest winter. As I write this, some of the most gorgeous communities in our country are being shaken to their core by the effects of Hurricane Ivan. Collectively, we are all facing many sustainability challenges, due to pollution.
St. Francis also said "It was easy to love God in all that was beautiful. The lessons of deeper knowledge, though, instructed me to embrace God in all things." The question is: how do we embrace God in the storms of life as they crash upon the shores of our own souls? When everything goes wrong at once, our hearts get broken, and we struggle to manage the demands placed upon us by life?
I believe it's in the same way that we embrace Him in beauty - we pay attention. When we look for God in sacred truths presented to us in scripture, in the kindness of strangers, in the mercy we are shown, in the blessings we are given, and in the eternal promise of heaven - we are held in a field of grace and strengthened to continue our spiritual journey through all the seasons of life, no matter how difficult they may be.
Whatever weather you are experiencing in your heart right now, my prayer is for you to witness the presence of God and hold fast to His promises - He is with you, and He is glorious - all of the time.
Have a question about a program or event going on in Campus Ministry? Got an idea for something you'd like to see happen? EMAIL US at ministry@sau.edu.
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It takes a lot of courage to be a human being.
With so much going on around the world, and equally inside of us, the days can sometimes get heavy. Fears and anxieties and stresses are things we all experience. But sometimes those pieces fill us so much that they begin to rob us of our joy, and our hope. There are a few times within the gospels where Jesus speaks to such experience. “Do not be afraid. Just believe,” he says. A nice sentiment, I think. But it always struck me as odd, this statement to “just believe.” Believe what? Jesus does not say. Apparently, though, those are the two choices - be afraid or believe.
When we discover that we are not in control of everything, we have a choice, I guess. We can fear, or allow our fears and anxieties to consume us, or we can believe. We can panic and fall overboard or we can ride out the storm. We can despair or we can wait, and maybe for a very long time, for a sense of stability to return. We can be afraid or we can believe.
In our lives, I think we discover that this is almost never an “either/or” type thing. I’ve never come across anyone who has the ability to simply “believe” all the time, but I do know how both fear and belief feel, and that there is a difference between the two.
Fear is like a small cell with no air in it and no light. It is suffocating inside there, and dark. There is no room to turn around inside it. You can only face in one direction, but that doesn’t really matter much because you cannot see anyway. There is no future in that cell of fear. Everything is over and everything is past. When you are locked up like that, tomorrow is as far away as the light.
Belief is something else altogether, although I think we often get confused as to what belief really is. It is not a well-built nest, or a well-defended castle. Perhaps it is more like a rope bridge over the Grand Canyon. It’s sturdy enough, but it is also constantly swinging back and forth. There’s plenty of light and plenty of air, but there is also very little to hang onto.
At some point, we have to believe in the bridge more than we believe in the massive hole in the ground. And perhaps one of the greatest gifts is that we don’t have to believe all on our own. There are others to believe it with us, and even some to believe it for us when our own belief wears thin. Those people have crossed the bridge ahead of us and are waiting for us on the other side. You can talk to them if you like, as you step into the air, putting one foot ahead of the other. That’s all it really takes - just that: just one step at a time, slowly and surely, waving in the wind.
It takes a lot of courage to be a human being. But if Jesus is who he said he is, the bridge will hold. And if we have a hard time believing that, then someone will believe it for us – long enough for that one step of courage, that one step of faith, to set us forth on our journey to the other side.
Have a question about a program or event going on in Campus Ministry? Got an idea for something you'd like to see happen? EMAIL US at ministry@sau.edu.
