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Hello everyone,

In the Christian tradition, God is profoundly solid and immovable, like a gigantic rock, but at the same time his nature is delicate, being is wreathed in mystery and nuance. You can see this in the Psalms quite often: they talk about God’s unfathomable power and his personal relationship to narrator in the same breath: “Power belongs to you, God, and with you, Lord, is unfailing love” (Psalm 62:11-12). And in the Gospels, we learn that he cares for every sparrow, and every hair on our heads; he has stunning attention to detail. As my teammate Morgan and I stepped onto the SFU campus this morning, the question of how to describe such a God was front and center in my mind.

We said a brief prayer and then approached a young woman who was sitting in the common area reading something on her phone.

“Hello” I said, “We are conducting a survey on this campus and we’re wondering: do you have a moment to answer a few quick questions?” She said yes and we introduced ourselves and took a seat at her table. Then I asked a question that we use to learn about what’s going on in a person’s life and how they see themselves in relation to God (or if they believe in him):

“If God could work one miracle in your life right now, what would it be?”

She didn’t have to think about her answer: “I would pray that my mom, who was diagnosed two days ago with stage IV cancer, would be healed.” And now, for the first time, I saw that her eyes were dark with grief. The various apologetics that Morgan and I had prepared melted away and I just said,

“I’m so sorry. Can we pray for you?”

“Yes.”

We prayed for her and she thanked us with deep emotion. That was our first act of evangelism. It got me thinking about how we don’t need to reveal every facet of God to people all at once. If we can testify to just one aspect of his personality in our campus interactions, then I believe our work will have been a success.

Morgan and I had seven other conversations with SFU students. These other students were in more typical circumstances: they were concerned with tests, family matters, and careers. One was a faintly Muslim Iranian, two were strong Muslims from elsewhere in the Middle East, one was a Sikh from India, one was an atheist from Vancouver, and another was a skeptical Christian with Jungian sympathies from a small town in England.

This last one was named Arian. He had black eyes, a black coat, and tall curly black hair. He was studying computer science and his attitude was measured and philosophical. It quickly became clear to us that he was grappling the perennial tension between reason and revelation.

He told me that he’d been listening to a number of Jordan Peterson’s biblical lectures and debates, and I told him that those same lectures and debates had played a central role in my own path back to faith. So we talked about some of the questions he had about those lectures. At the end, he told us that many years ago he had played one of the Wise Men in a Christmas play. As he has grown older, he has moved away from church and traditional religion. But now he has a certain nostalgia for it. We encouraged him in his journey, got his email for the campus club, and prayed for him.

There are many other events from today that won’t fit in this email, but I hope that those two vignettes give you an example of the variety of people we spoke to today. By and large, they were friendly and open to conversation. In the midst of our work, I forgot to take good pictures, so today I’m going to send a photo of our full team that we took yesterday [photo 1] and a photo of the current view from my hotel window [photo 2].

Thanks to all of you for your support; I’m glad to let you know that we are making real connections with students up here and that many of them have a hunger for God.

Much love from Canada -

Sincerely,

Sam