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“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust."
— Matthew 5:43-45
Greetings from Cambridge!
As I was recently reading Nehemiah, I was struck by how single-minded and focused he was on the task the Lord had called him to do, rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. In Nehemiah chapter 6 some of his opponents try to distract him away from his mission, but his response is quite remarkable: “I am doing a great work and I cannot come down.” There was no taking Nehemiah away from what God had called him to do.
One of my perennial resolutions in every new year is to read more deeply and profoundly about both faith and the world around me. However, given my suggestion in an earlier letter, I am moving from resolutions to building habits - they tend to be much more permanent.
This week is our first full week with the students after winter break, and it is starting with a bang. This weekend we are heading to Refreshing Mountain near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, for a weekend retreat. Nearly 50 students will be seeking the Lord’s presence and renewal, and we are hopeful for a filling of His Spirit as we worship, pray, and fellowship.
It has been a spiritually rich month here in Princeton as our students have returned from break with a desire to seek the Lord. As you may know, Princeton’s usual academic calendar means that January is the month of final papers and assignments for the students. During this time, we have developed a tradition of hosting our daily prayer meetings at the Melrose Center. In the midst of exams and assignments, our students have been faithful to pray. Over this month, we regularly had groups of well over a dozen students praying together. Overall, we sense our students are showing an increased desire to seek the Lord and we praise God for this.
We have begun our second semester at Cornell as students have come back from winter break. After a period of transition, we now have a new director on our staff. Greg Ray has come from Madrid, Spain, where he was doing missionary work to lead our team. As we move into this new stage, we look forward to seeing how God is going to work through the team on this campus.
I pray that you are having a blessed start to the new year.
Christian Union at Columbia started 2020 with a new Ministry Director and some faculty transitions. The students recently returned from vacation after Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, and we are truly excited for this upcoming semester.
College students often share a common blind spot that we all fall prey to: the tendency to think of life through a very narrow and individual filter. I don’t blame the students—the schools cultivate that brand of individualism, and we as a society certainly model it as well. So even as we draft our own personal goals and resolutions for the new year, allow me to offer some perspective from C.S. Lewis:
