Year Number Twenty-Four

After about three weeks, I'm back to posting on here again. It has been a crazy month that found me away from home for over three weeks. But now I'm back - and looking a new school year (year number 24 at the UofA) in the face! Last week we were at the National Student Conference in Evansville, IN. It is a great conference every year. One of the best parts is the chance to visit with friends who are doing campus ministry across the country. If you asked any one of them if they were ready for the semester to start, they would have told you "No!" After 23 years, I'm still that way every year. Some students moved in on Sunday and the dorms open for everyone on Thursday, but there is still that feeling that you're not quite ready for the invasion of over 16,000 students. Of spending six weeks tracking down and meeting incoming students interested in Christ on Campus. Of needing to grow by a third just to stay at the same size you were the year before. Or, as one of the speakers said last week, of wondering if anyone is actually going to show up! But we are here again. And we are as ready as we ever are. We have done what we can do to prepare. Now we pray and work and meet people and pray some more. Feel free to pray with us!

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I read this verse today in my time with God:

"Humans are satisfied with whatever looks good; GOD probes for what is good."

Proverbs 16:2 (The Message)

I'm not sure of how accurately that translates the thought of the original Hebrew, but I love the thought. I think it is so true. We are quick to settle for appearance rather than substance; for what looks or feels good or true or right rather than what is truly good or true or right. I especially pray that the students we work with develop the maturity to discern what looks good from what truly is good. This applies to the way the use their time, the things they choose to get involved in, the careers they choose, and, especially, those with whom they get romantically involved. It is so easy for us to be distracted by looks or charisma or possessions or popularity and miss what is truly enduring - a person of character and integrity and compassion who is a God-seeker.