Category: Teach Students (Page 6 of 7)

This semester I have been reflecting on the limits of our time and how easy it is to go beyond them committing to many good things around us.

Last week I saw a limit from a different angle as I talked with a staff who was up against a limit in their journey with Jesus in one area and could no longer move forward without extreme pain to him and those around him.

Additionally I’ve been experiencing the limits of my wisdom, energy, and expertise. What will I choose to do in these places? It can be easy to keep pressing forward but will you pray that I (and potentially you) will stop and reflect with Jesus in the space where I face my limits?

As staff we experience Jesus in deep ways when studying scripture with students. Here is the story of one such encounter from Esther Chu in St Louis.

I was originally just hoping to debrief Fall Conference with Michelle* but when I asked how her week was she shared about the death of a close family friend that had just occurred and how shaken up she was about it but also how she felt this need to be strong and not cry about it.  Amazingly, I had been prepping John 11 (Lazarus) for another meeting.  So, while I wasn’t sure how to minister to her, I asked her if she would be open to reading this passage with me as I have been thinking about it too. 

As she read it, we had a really good discussion.  In the end, she said something that was so profound I’m still thinking about it now.  She said, “Jesus wants to be invited into our deep pain and places of death, and when he comes he weeps with us, but also when he comes he can’t help but to bring himself.  And He is Life—so we bring life when we invite him into the pain of death”.  

Isn’t it amazing that as we bring scripture to students, they bring scripture to us in new ways and ways that minister to our souls as well?  I’m grateful for that.

How should we see ourselves in the Exodus story?

Take 15 minutes to listen to my colleague Ivan Paz clarify how this passage relates to those who read it.

Is life hitting you hard right now? This is the experience of a staff I connected with this week. The image that came to mind in prayer was out of Jeremiah 17:8 of a tree “that sends out its roots by the stream”.

Can you picture stretching and straining to grab something at the edge of your reach? Please join me in praying for that type of posture towards the living water for our staff, students, and partners who are walking through a difficult season.

Wearing a lens as we interact with scripture is a fact of our humanness. We’ve seen despicable uses of this as many have justified horrific acts by reading the scripture through a lens of supremacy of one race/ethnic group over another.

The reality of the Jesus we invite others to join us in following is that he came at scripture as a poor oppressed minority who was on the underside of the ruling power. How often do we read scripture through this lens? Two excellent examples of engaging scripture from this lens are Reading the Bible from the Margins and Jesus and Disinherited.

From my position and those of students I work with in America (a world superpower) and studying at Universities (highly privileged locale) it is hard to put on the lens that Jesus lived. How would it impact our work and the church if we began to do this?