Learning and Walking the Unknown Path

It’s been a busy couple of weeks with the Multi-Faith Centre at KPU. Since the new semester has started we have been busy attending different orientation events, trying to raise awareness and create some student interest and energy around the MFC. We’ve also been internally working on expanding and bringing on board new chaplains and new faith traditions – the latest on that front is a new Buddhist chaplain on the Richmond campus and there will soon be a humanist chaplain joining me on the Surrey campus. Things are moving along!

As for creating a Christian community here on campus, things have been slow but relatively steady, probably to be expected in the first year on campus. I’ve made a number of positive connections with Christian students and staff, and I’ve enjoyed these first steps of developing a friendship with them; I look forward to more. But students are very busy and have widely different schedules, which makes bringing us all together something of a challenge. I continue to work on finding a common time and I trust that the Lord will provide. Morning Prayer is happening on Thursdays at 8: 40 regardless of who joins me, but I look forward to sharing the scriptures with fellow Christians as the semester and school year moves along and I make stronger and more frequent connections.

This morning for prayer I read Psalm 25: “Show me your ways, O Lord, teach me your paths; guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long.” What are God’s ways on this university campus? What paths of God can I follow as I walk down these halls? God seems often frustratingly silent on the details. But I trust that his paths run “to the ends of the earth,” and so in that spirit I can tentatively hope that as I walk down to the student café for a coffee in the morning the simple journey I am taking can become obedient to God’s divine providence, guidance, and direction. I am by no means certain or confident of what that precisely means. But I have no choice other than deep trust that my presence at Kwantlen can join in with the very action of God.