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It is so good to have you all moving back to campus this weekend. It’s been really quiet here, this past month or so. A weird feeling, being at a near-empty university after a semester of constantly going and moving and writing and thinking. Like a hollowed-out shell that echoes in places it shouldn’t.
Now, we’re moving back. Back to the same dorm room, with the same friends, and the same friendly faces. But not everything is the same. We’ll have new classes, new professors, we’ll feel new excitement and new anxieties. Perhaps the best part of it all, our return to campus life, is that we’ll meet new people - people we’ve never seen before, who we never knew existed. People with lives and experiences are as real as yours and mine. People who will teach us things we never knew about ourselves and the world around us, if we let them.
In a couple months, we’ll hit the two-year mark since the world really shut down because of the pandemic. And two years later, we find ourselves still in the midst of it. We’re not at square one, of course. We know things now about the virus that we didn’t back then. We have vaccines and boosters and better ways of treating the virus. But it isn’t the same, is it?
The world, your world, is different now, and there’s no sure way, or real way, of getting back to it. Maybe that’s okay for some us, and for others of us it isn’t. We have all experienced this one, common experience of pandemic differently. Individually, we have weighed our risks, we have decided what is important to us and what is not, and we have made sacrifices we wish we did not have to make.
Acknowledging these realities is so important, especially in an environment where we live together, or work together, so closely. We each have our own lived experiences. We each have our own victories and losses. We each have our own lives, woven together by love and heartache and joy and sadness. And while we share so many experiences together here at Ambrose, we do not experience those in the same way. What is important to you may not be near as important to me. The values that I hold in high regard, you may not. And that’s okay because we are not the same person, and we do not always see the world around us in the same way.
Each new semester gifts us the opportunity, however, to see the world around us differently. It is a time of new beginnings, when the people we meet afford us a glimpse of how they see the world. So the new person, the one you’ve never seen before, the one you never knew existed, turn your ear to them and listen. Listen to their story, to their experiences, to their loves and losses and joys and sorrows. Extend your own gracious hand to them, that you might learn from one another.
Dorothy Day once wrote that “we cannot love God unless we love each other, and to love we must know each other.” Take time this semester to do that - to know one another, to hear one another, to see one another.
May our new semester be filled with new people, and new experiences, and new ways of seeing the world around us.
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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In our heart of hearts, we find that we are all seeking - seeking peace, seeking purpose, a place of belonging, a meaning and sense of worth beyond what our own lives and world provide us. We yearn for more.
We look for a star to guide us, or an angel to lead us, or family and friends to embrace us. We desire authentic lives lived with real connection to others and to ourselves, a desire that is one of ongoing tension and ongoing struggle. We search high and low, often finding that the comfort we thought would fulfill us was only fleeting.
Our seeking is only heightened today, as we witness so many different aspects of our lives and relationships changed, or robbed, or shifted because of the ongoing pandemic.
If there is a remedy to our common struggle, if there is an answer to our questions of yearning, where can it be found?
Many of us know the birth story well – how the whole of Bethlehem was clogged by travel, folks occupying the beds and rooms across every inn and home in town. Not a single space remained, apart from an old shed out back filled animals. It was this place where Mary and Joseph found themselves, with a small feeding trough to lay their child.
This is where we tend to leave the story: two loving parents leaning over a child, surrounded by warm animals, and bathed in heavenly light. But at some point, the heavens had to close up, the angels returning back to heaven, the warm animals burrowing themselves into sleep. The night grew cold and the reality of the world began to set in for the new parents – fear, anxiety, darkness, a place to belong instead of competing with sheep for a place to sleep.
Here, in this reality, is the place the child was born, the baby in that lie nestled in the trough. The child was named Emmanuel, which did not so simply mean God, but God With Us. The God who came to the world in the midst of real life, not fairy tale. The God who came to a world filled with anxieties and fears, with struggles and strife.
When we celebrate Christmas each year, we are afforded the opportunity to remember. We remember the story of the two parents and the little town of Bethlehem. We remember the God who became flesh. And here, we haul our hopes and fears of all the years, and place them at the feet of the child.
With all our pain and all our joy, with all our loneliness and all our hope, with all the suffering throughout the world, we remember each Christmas that God desired to be there, right in the middle of it all. To be right here, in the midst of our own homes and lives. To accompany and to love. To be in relationship and to bring meaning.
Far off, in some distant field, sat a group of shepherds tending to their sheep. And as the night grew old, there appeared to them an angel. “Do not be afraid; for behold, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all people,” the angel announced. “Today, in the city of David, a savior has been born for you who is Messiah and Lord.”
And away up the hill, from the direction of town, came the sound of a newborn baby’s cry.
How else could God gain the trust of creation? How else could I be persuaded that God knew my life inside and out, that God earnestly and completely cares, unless God lived a life like mine? God risked it all to get close to us, in hopes that we might learn to love, and be loved, once again.
Wishing you all the peace of God as you enter into Finals Week. And as you return home, or wherever it is you find yourself this Christmas, remember that God has decided that the best place for him to be, the greatest of all places to build his home, is right in your arms.
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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On a recent ordinary night of driving my kids around to their activities, a soulful rendition of “Oh Come, Oh Come Emmanuel” came on the radio. I wasn’t prepared for my first Christmas song of the year! My heart instantly filled with the joy of the season, and tears came to my eyes - I didn’t plan on that wonderful spiritual experience.
Generally speaking though, Advent is a season of planning. We prepare gifts, special events, service projects, cards, and thoughtful gestures. We do everything we can to make sure the holidays will live up to our expectations.
When Mary and Joseph were busy preparing for the first Christmas – things didn’t go their way. In spite of their obedience to God, Joseph couldn’t prevent Mary from having to flee on a donkey, be rejected at the inn and give birth in a manger surrounded by animals. Yet in spite of adversity, they were able to experience the joyful arrival of Christ's presence in the world - can you imagine how wonderful that must have been?
As hard as we try to prepare for Christmas, things don’t always go our way either! The extra busy-ness can feel overwhelming, and personal struggles can feel more pronounced during this season that makes us long for the very best of life.
Through the holiday rush, final exams and whatever else you’re going through, I pray you can experience the wonder of Christ’s presence in ordinary moments and at the gatherings you work so hard to prepare for. I pray the true Spirit of the season is born in the manger of your heart and fills you with a deep sense of awe in who Jesus was, is and always will be. I pray you receive the gift of deep and lasting inner peace.
Isaiah 9:6: For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; and the government will rest on His shoulders; and His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.
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.
