Sometimes the only thing we can do is pray. I have heard that saying a lot in Christian circles. It is spoken softly in hospital rooms. It is screamed across social media in the midst of gun violence. It is spoken in hushed tones as parents wrestle with disappointments during teenage years. It is offered in comfort in the midst of natural disasters and cataclysmic events half a world away. And it has definitely crossed my mind more than once while watching the latest footage of the crisis in the Ukraine unfold in what seems like real time across a host of different platforms. 

We have heard hundreds of heroic stories. President Zelensky standing with his cabinet in Kyiv declaring, “we’re still here.” Aid groups and citizens rushing to provide food, medicine and help. The Pub Theology creators also shared as story of a Ukrainian pastor who is simply doing what he can to share the gospel, in word and in deed amidst the crisis: 

“The whole church prayed on their knees for our president, our country, and for peace,” said Ukrainian pastor Vadym Kulynchenko of his church in Kamyanka, 145 miles south of the capital, Kyiv. “After the service, we did a first-aid training.” Rather than a sermon, time was given to share testimonies from harrowing days of air raids. Many psalms were offered, and Kulynchenko’s message centered on Proverbs 29:25: “Fear of man will prove to be a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is kept safe.”

Even people on the outside Ukraine are rallying in support of the Ukrainian people. Earlier this week, Roman Abromaovich, the Russian owner of the Chelsea football team, declared that he was going to sell the team and donate the proceeds to “victims of the war in the Ukraine.” 

These stories are both heartbreaking and heartwarming. They remind us of both the best and worst of what it means to be a human in this broken, sinful world. 

What is happening now is talked about in terms of being “unprecedented.” It is not. Invasions like this one have happened in other neighboring areas of Russia. They have happened previously in Europe as Germany expanded its borders. They have happened, and continue to happen, over and over again in the Middle East. 

We have also talked about the crisis in terms of being “unexpected in our lifetime.” Yet, my grandmother lived through two world wars, the wars in Korea and Vietnam, and almost lived to see the war in Iraq before passing away at 98 years old. Many people of her generation witnessed all of those things. We have been fortunate in the United States to be removed logistically from most of the fighting the world has experienced over the last century. We have not lacked conflict and violence as a species in any decade since the world began.  

The reality is that wars and crises, such as the one in Ukraine, have always been a part of human history. Jesus actually tells us that until He comes again, we will experience these things again and again as the birth pangs of what is to come: 

“You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains” (Matthew 24:6-13).

However, that reality does not make what is happening any less difficult to comprehend or less horrific. It does not make it any less heart wrenching. It does not make it any less  devastating or scary. This is the first major crisis many of us have seen.

Jesus did not say these words to discount or condone these things, but to let the disciples know that these things are part of life in a fallen world. He said it to encourage them to stay steadfast in their faith. He said to help them remember to both turn to, and trust in, God in the midst of what they would face. 

So, taking into account Christ’s words, how as Christians do we approach the current crisis? How do we navigate the fear, anger, powerlessness and outrage that we feel? Here, Jesus provides an answer as well. Rather than giving into fear, rather than resorting to violence, Jesus encourages us to follow him. In the book of Matthew Jesus’ statement to remember the brokenness of the world and hold fast comes directly before Jesus goes to the cross. He finishes his teaching and then the final part of His journey to Golgotha begins.

And we know how Jesus faced that night. He prayed. 

He gathered His disciples together in the garden and spent the night in prayer to God. He knew what was going to come and He knew the only way to face it was to God in prayer. 

All of scripture points us to this posture in the midst of crisis. Psalm after psalm in the Old Testament cries out to God for salvation, for peace, for an end to violence. In fact the Psalms even cry out for God to engage violently with our enemies while preserving the faithful. They echo all of our fears. They echo our anger. They echo all of our desires. As Rev. Dr. Carol Bechtel, one of my seminary professors, once noted, the psalms give us a Biblical vocabulary for our grief, our pain, and our frustration. The psalms also give us permission to bring all of what we feel and struggle with to God. 

David does not hold back when he calls out to God in fear and sadness:

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish?” (Psalm 22:1).

The psalmist does not mince words when they cry out for God to do justice: 

“Arise, Lord, in your anger; rise up against the rage of my enemies. Awake, my God; decree justice” (Psalm 7:6).

Yet each psalm acknowledges that it is God’s kingdom and God’s justice that we seek. It is God’s kingdom and God’s justice that we need. It is God’s peace, God’s great Shalom in which the lion lays down with the lamb, in which our swords are beaten into plowshares and the work of cultivating life and love become the sole, and soul, focus of all of humankind. To that end, Jesus teaches us how to pray. 

Jesus tells the disciples to pray the words of the Lord’s prayer. It is through our seeking and obeying God that the kingdom will come. It teaches us that we can rely on God for things beyond our control and for our daily needs. And when we are at a loss for words, unable to articulate our greater needs or the needs of the world around us. It too can give us a vocabulary for the unspeakable. 

Walter Brueggemann gives a great example of such a prayer in his poem/prayer “Waiting Bread…and for God’s future.” It echoes with loss while affirming the call of Jesus to come to our Father in prayer and to trust God for our future:

Waiting for Bread…and for God’s Future

We are strange mixtures of loss and hope.

As we are able, we submit our losses to you. 

We know about sickness and dying,

about death and mortality,

about failure and disappointment.

And now for a moment we do our failing and out dying in your presence,

You who attend to us in loss.

As we are able, we submit our hopes to you.

We know about self-focused fantasy and notions of control.

But we also know that our futures are out beyond us, held in your good hand.

Our hopes are filled with promises of well-being, justice, and mercy.

Move us this day beyond our fears and anxieties into your land of goodness.

We wait for your coming, we pray for your kingdom.

In the meantime, give us bread for this day.

Amen.

~ Walter Brueggemann

Brueggemann’s words, built around the Lord’s prayer, remind us that prayer re-centers our eyes on God. Because sometimes all we can do is pray. In moments where we are powerless to affect any other change on our own, prayer recalls us to a posture of hope and allows us to shed our despair. 

And so we too can pray. We can pray that the crisis in Ukraine would come to an end. We can pray that the people would be protected. That the combatants would lay down their arms. That there would be peace. We can also pray that God’s kingdom would truly reign and bring an end to all violence, aggression and evil in every corner of the world. That God’s Kingdom would come and God’s will would be done…on earth as it is in heaven.  

Sometimes the only thing, and the best thing, we can do is pray.

Introduction
My name is Jess Fox, and in this final year of my doctoral program, I participated in an 8-month long Ignatian Spiritual Exercises program, facilitated by a spiritual director from the Hermitage, a Christian retreat center in Three Rivers, MI. This program was made possible through the Emerging Leader Grant, which is generously provided by the Christian Reformed Church each year to young adults seeking to develop their leadership capacity within faith circles. Although I was not an active participant in the activities of the Campus Edge Fellowship this year, I would like to offer a brief reflection of my experiences with the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises as well as how I pursued spiritual conversations, growth, and relationships during the season of graduate school.

Background of The Exercises
The Exercises were written by St. Ignatius of Loyola in the early 1500s. These exercises were originally intended to be completed over the course of an intensive four-week retreat; over the centuries, the Exercises were modified to stretch over 8 months. Themes of the four weeks of the original Exercises are the following: (1) experiencing the boundless mercy of God, (2) accompanying Jesus Christ on mission, (3) being with Jesus in his suffering and savoring the grace of compassion, and (4) experiencing the joy and sharing the consolation of the risen Lord. I followed the Exercises with the guide of the book, The Ignatian Adventure, by Kevin O’Brien (2011), and each “week” was broken down into daily scripture readings and meditations. Throughout the book, I learned about some of the foundations of Ignatian Spirituality, which include: the Examen, a daily prayer of awareness; Ignatian repetition, repeating a scripture reading and finding new perspectives; the Principle and Foundation, a life resume summary statement; the Colloquy, imagining oneself in a biblical scene; discernment of the spirits of desolation and consolation (think C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters); and Ignatian contemplation, imaginative prayer. Ignatius intended the Exercises to be of particular usefulness during seasons of discernment and decision-making.

On a practical level, the Exercises took the form of a daily Scripture passage and a suggested format of engaging with the Biblical text. While these approaches to stepping into Scripture were not entirely new to me, I was pleasantly surprised by how refreshingly novel, yet simultaneously deeply historical, these activities were. At times, I found it quite difficult to imagine myself in a Biblical scene, have conversations with characters, and really imagine Jesus in the flesh. After all, Scripture is the inspired Word of God and how dare I apply my limited, human lens to the sacred text. Regardless, I encountered a new freedom and use of my creative capacity throughout these contemplations.

In addition to the daily Scripture readings and meditations, this program involved bi-weekly conversations with the spiritual director face-to-face or via Skype. During these conversations, I had the opportunity to share insights from the Exercises, ask questions, and gain a new perspective from a wise, scholarly listener. In many ways, I mark these conversations as the fruitful aspect of the Exercises program. During our conversations, when I felt unable to fully attend to the Exercises and dizzied by the events of life, this spiritual director met me where I was and gently opened my eyes to attend to the work of God through people and circumstances. She asked big questions, waited patiently, and drew connections between my reflections and the Exercises. If you ever have an opportunity to develop a relationship with a spiritual director, I encourage you to do so! SDs’ is seemingly otherworldly from our typical expectations of specificity, measurability, and precision of graduate school, but there is something grandly relieving to converse with someone who sees the world and issues of the soul in broader, and often differently colored, brush strokes.

The Soul of Shame: Retelling the Stories we Believe about Ourselves, Curt Thompson
Author Curt Thompson, M.D., offers an integrated approach to understanding shame through the lens of his psychiatry background and Biblical perspective. His premise throughout the book is “shame is the emotional weapon that evil uses to (1) corrupt our relationships with God and each other, and (2) disintegrate any and all gifts of vocational vision and creativity” (p. 13). He notes how shame targets the mind and can become a large part or all of the story that people live. Some of the remedies that the author proposes in the second half of the book are the following: vulnerability, accountability, and community.
Perhaps the most hopeful portion of the book for me was the author’s encouragement to “tell a new story, a story of hope and creativity, one that scorns shame in order to imagine new minds, new possibilities and new narratives, all of which point to the new heaven and earth that we believe Jesus is surely bringing” (p. 186).

This report from the board is from the Campus Edge Spring Newsletter.

A lot has happened since the last Campus Edge Fellowship (CEF) Newsletter, and the Board sees much that we can be thankful for, and many reasons to be enthusiastic about the future of the ministry. In December, a team from Christian Reformed Home Missions visited to conduct a review of CEF. Team members met with Brenda, Board members, and students participating in the ministry. We received the report of the Home Missions Review Team last month and were delighted with the many positive things it had to say about Brenda and the work of CEF. The report also included a wealth of useful suggestions for making CEF a stronger and more effective ministry going forward.
At the end of March, my predecessor Jake Baker stepped down from the CEF Board, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank him for his many years of service on the Board. He has held every executive office (sometimes two at the same time), always working hard and cheerfully to help the ministry thrive. Jake is finishing his Ph.D. and moving on to the next phase of his life, and all of us who have served with him on the Board wish him well.
Brenda continues to lead a ministry that serves the unique spiritual needs of the graduate and professional students at MSU – organizing Bible studies, arranging weekly pub theology sessions, keeping the students informed about events of interest on campus and in the community, hosting social activities, and sometimes simply being there for students who need someone to talk with about things going on in their lives.
As always, we are thankful for your prayers and encouragement, and we ask for your continued support both spiritually and financially. We invite you to our annual Celebration Dinner to be held on May 23rd at the Lansing Country Club. It will be an opportunity to hear about and rejoice in the work God is doing through Campus Edge Fellowship.

– Jeff Biddle,  Campus Edge Board President

This is the Pastor’s Report from the Campus Edge Spring Newsletter.

Spring Semester has brought with it joys and challenges. Alongside of our regular Monday and Saturday studies, we’ve continued the Pub Theology group, added a weekly discussion on sexuality, and offered two retreats. The first retreat focused on Ignatian spirituality, and the second was time away at an Episcopalian monastery. In our studies, we pondered how differently society and church approach sexuality and spent time digging deeper into the Bible: the book of Ecclesiastes on Mondays and the prophets Elijah and Elisha on Saturdays. To read more about these, please see the reflections in the Campus Edge Spring Newsletter that have been adapted from the Campus Edge Blog .
We’re delighted to say that we once again have twenty-five people participating regularly and at least that many who are peripherally connected to the ministry. The past semester was a bit quieter in terms of attendance, as CEF competed with the time pressures that come with starting clinical rotations, completing comprehensive exams, and finishing up dissertations, alongside of the breaks of spring break and Easter. Yet, all this hard work is paying off, and CEF can rejoice that multiple people connected to the ministry have (almost) completed their dissertations.
Your prayers are requested for those who’ve finished up their studies – that things will go well as they find and take up new jobs and responsibilities. Pray also for those who are having other life events – like weddings or babies. By the time we send out this newsletter, baby Kronemeijer should have arrived, and I’ll have started my maternity leave. I will miss the meaningful conversations I have with students, but I am also thankful for the time the board is giving me to adjust to taking on the new identity of mother. I’ll be back in August, and until then Jessica Fox, one of CEF’s emerging leaders and a newly minted MSU PhD has graciously agreed to take over many of my responsibilities for the summer.

– Brenda Kronemeijer-Heyink
Pastor, Campus Edge Fellowship