Planning unplanned things

One of my top priorities as InterVarsity staff is to help students meet Jesus.

The problem is, I don't always know how to to do that.  I myself am not Jesus, and I don't always do a great job of knowing what Jesus wants to say to a student in any given moment to be able to help facilitate that.

Or, you know, I'm a sinful person and my own sin can get in the way of recognizing God's invitations.

It can be tempting to get caught up in the training, and coaching, and leading and forget that they're all for the purpose of creating space for students to meet Jesus.

Students, too, can have a hard time spending time with Jesus or recognizing God's presence throughout their day.  It's easy to procrastinate, put too much on their plates, and then have a hard time managing all of the things, thinking that they're all more urgent than spending quality time with Jesus.

This past week, the Rochester Area InterVarsity Staff came together to create space for students to meet with Jesus.  We invited all of our students from our chapters to come to Geneseo to spend a couple of hours in the middle of their day on Saturday for a self-led retreat.  We set up a few stations centered around nine spiritual temperaments and provided them an inventory to help students recognize ways they may best engage with God, and have space to try a new way of engaging with God.  We also allocated a sanctuary with beautiful stained glass as a room for complete silence.  We gave them a retreat guide, but told them that they didn't have to use it.  Students brought their own lunch, and they had the option of eating their lunch in silence as a way of continuing to engage with God.

I didn't really know what to expect.  For me, it was freeing to be able to create a space that students could lead themselves through.  It was freeing to not have to teach something, or lead something, or plan exhaustive details.  I myself got to spend some quality time in silence with the Lord.  For students, it was freeing to dedicate some quality time to meet with the Lord in silence, while also doing it in community.

Praise the Lord for the way He meets us when we create space in our lives to hear from Him!

--From "The Living Reminder" by Henri J. M. Nouwen

The minister, as a living memory of God's great deeds in history, is called to heal by reminding people of their wounded past and by connecting their wounds with the wounds of all humanity, redeemed by the suffering of God in Christ.

But what are the implications of such a viewpoint for the personal life of the minister? 

The temptation is strong to ask the "how" question:  "How do I become a living memory of God; how do I accept and connect; how do I lift up the individual story into the divine history?"  These questions are temptations insofar as they avoid the more basic question:  "Who am I as a living memory of God?" 

The main question indeed is not a question of doing, but a question of being.  When we speak about the minister as a living reminder of God, we are not speaking about a technical specific tool, techniques, and skills, but about a way of being which embraces the totality of life:  working and resting, eating and drinking, praying and playing, acting and waiting.  Before any professional skill, we need a spirituality, a way of living in the spirit by which all we are and all we do becomes a form of reminding. 

One way to express this is to say that in order to be a living reminder of the Lord, we must walk in his presence as Abraham did.  To walk in the presence of the Lord means to move forward in life in such a way that all our desires, thoughts, and actions are constantly guided by him.  When we walk in the Lord's presence, everything we see, hear, touch, or taste reminds us of him.  This is what is meant by a prayerful life.  It is not a life in which we say many prayers, but a life in which nothing, absolutely nothing, is done, said, or understood independently of him who is the origin and purpose of our existence.

Washing students' feet.

John 13:1-6 The Message (MSG)

Washing His Disciples’ Feet

13 ^1-2 Just before the Passover Feast, Jesus knew that the time had come to leave this world to go to the Father. Having loved his dear companions, he continued to love them right to the end. It was suppertime. The Devil by now had Judas, son of Simon the Iscariot, firmly in his grip, all set for the betrayal.

^3-6 Jesus knew that the Father had put him in complete charge of everything, that he came from God and was on his way back to God. So he got up from the supper table, set aside his robe, and put on an apron. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the feet of the disciples, drying them with his apron. When he got to Simon Peter, Peter said, “Master, you wash my feet?”

Earlier this week, I attended our Upstate Team Meetings, a semesterly spiritual formation retreat with the northern half of our NY/NJ region.  During one of the days there, we studied this passage (John 13) together. 

(Yes, it's the Message version.  You're not reading the link wrong.  A rare happenstance in InterVarsity, I know.  Don't worry, we still encountered the Lord.)

One of the big things that stood out to me was the fact that Jesus' identity and authority were not dependent on whether or not the disciples understood what he was saying or doing.  He knew His relationship to God and the authority He had been given to carry out His mission.

This didn't change when Peter clearly didn't understand what Jesus was doing, nor seemed patient enough to wait to understand later.  His identity and authority from God didn't change when Judas betrayed Him.  Jesus continued to love and serve them.  He pressed forward into the tension and confusion.  He didn't compromise his actions.  His authority didn't diminish with the disciples' comments or actions. 

This made me think about two things:

1. While I hunger for a deep sense of joy and compassion for this ministry at RIT, I wonder how much of my lack in those areas is tied to my belief that my authority is determined by how well people understand what I am doing.  It's a belief I know in my head isn't true, but I certainly act on it more than on the truth that my identity and spiritual authority come from Jesus.
   
2. What would it look like to 'wash the feet' of RIT students?  How can I serve them in such a way that would point them to the love of Jesus?

They are still things I am pondering over.  Would you pray with me as I continue to reflect on these thoughts and bring them to Jesus?