Everything You Need to Know

On this, the evening of my last United Methodist/Protestant service of this academic year at AU, I find myself going back to the first sermon I ever heard here. It was a wonderful message from campus UM chaplain Rev. Mark Schaefer entitled "Everything You Need to Know," and it cemented me automatically as a committed community member here. If you click on the sermon title, you can read it; and now, two years into college, I can say that I haven't found anything on there to be untrue.

Here's a passage that really spoke to me:

"This is the most important thing you should know: God loves you and nothing can separate you from that Love. God loves you as you are for who you are. It doesn't matter how you feel about yourself --God loves you. It doesn't matter whether your'e accepted by others --God loves you. It doesn't matter whether you conform to anyone else's idea of what language you should speak, or what color skin you should have, or what sexual orientation you should be, or what political ideology you should espouse, or what your belief should be on the single- or double-procession of the Holy Spirit within the Trinity. (That's a really big issue on this campus). None of that matters. God loves you.

That is the most important thing you need to know. On that fact hangs everything else. Our entire lives as a community of faith are lived as the response to the unmerited grace and love of God."