I am starting to get restless a little at school. We have less than thirty days until school is out. Although I am excited, I am going to miss everyone that will be leaving. We have a strange setup here, kinda, at seminary. The only people I can more or less be guaranteed to see more than a single year, is my class I start with. We are on campus for two years and then go away on internship for a year and come back for our senior year. This means there are always people leaving and coming. After this year, the middlers that I know very well, since I was taking classes online and visiting while they were Juniors, I will not see again on campus. The Seniors, many who I have begun to know well, are also going to be gone.
All of this just kinda leaves an empty feeling in me. On one hand I am excited to go off to my CPE assignment (Chaplaincy training and more) but on the other hand, I do not want this to end but I know It must. In all of this, I keep wondering, where is Jesus in this? This community is so forming and I can see Jesus all around. I felt the Holy Spirit today in chapel as well. See my posting in my Loss and Grief blog today. Where is Jesus in us having to leave each other?
I know Jesus is there….. where do you see Jesus at? We as pastors in training, here on campus, on internship or on first call, will be experiencing all sorts of good and bad things. It is easy to see where Jesus is in the good but what about the bad? We will have to leave our families in some cases, no longer be with our friends we have made, suffer many other hardships along the way. I don’t want this to be all negative, since there is so many positive things that do, and will happen.
Jesus had a childhood, so he understood us in our childhood. He had a ministry here on earth. When Jesus was on earth, his ministry was filled with good and bad times. Sometimes the people got it and there was great joy. Other
times, just when Jesus thought someone understood, they showed Him just how much that did not understand. Now there is some frustration!
Remember, Jesus was human and divine. I think to often we forget that Jesus was human as well. Therefore the divine was able to fully participate in all that it meant to be human. The happiness, sadness, sorrow, joy, friendship, betrayal, pain and suffering. Jesus has seen it all, knows it all, has experienced it all and we can be assured He knows what we go through each and every day. Jesus is walking side by side us always. We can turn to Jesus and tell Him just how we feel and what we need.
Matthew 7:7-11
7 “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find;knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. 9 Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? 11 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
Where is Jesus today in your life? Where do you see Jesus in another person’s life and have you shared the Good News to them?
Go out and proclaim the good new of Jesus and what He is doing in your life!