Alfredo Deambrosi

A colleague wrote a great post on his blog about how refreshing it is when students open up and share what their needs and burdens are.

This week, I asked my students to complete an online, protected survey so that I could learn a little bit more about them. They gave some very insightful answers to the question, “What long-term prayer requests (those that could potentially be requests of yours throughout this semester) do you have?”

The major themes seemed to be the following:

• growing in a relationship with God
• salvation of family members
• physical trials of family members
• keeping up with academic requirements
• being able to pay for school

There were also some unique requests that are still very important. For example, one student requested prayer that her sister’s wedding planning would go smoothly. Another requested prayer for a family member in Iraq.

Overall, this information helps me know how to pray better for my students. I am looking forward to getting to know them this semester.

In a service yesterday morning, the congregation sang Charles Wesley’s hymn, “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling.”  As I was singing, I noticed a couple of themes and the connection between them.  While extolling various attributes of God, the hymn seems to be a prayer that God would bring permanent deliverance from anxiety.

The hymnist expresses the problem and the requests.  Without God, souls are “trembling” (line 8), “troubled” (10), and “bent to sinning” (13).  They need deliverance from sin and the anxiety that it brings.  The hymnist makes repeated requests for this deliverance.  In the first stanza, he prays, “Visit us with Thy salvation” (7).  Salvation, of course, communicates the theological truth of justification, but on a more foundational level, it communicates deliverance.  When one is saved from something, he is delivered from it.  The last stanza also uses the term “salvation” (27).  The requests in the second stanza convey more explicitly a desire to be free from anxiety.  He asks, “Let us find that second rest” (12) and “Set our hearts at liberty” (16).  The third stanza uses the word “deliver” explicitly (17).

Wesley connects the theme of permanence to this deliverance from anxiety.  Rather than simply requesting God’s presence, he asks that God “fix” his presence within us (3).  Referring to God in the second stanza as “Alpha and Omega” (14), Wesley reminds us of the eternality of Christ.  The reference is an allusion to Christ’s words in Revelation 1:8, 21:6, and 22:13 and reveals the Christ, who is omnipresent in space and time, to be the first and the last.  In the third stanza, Wesley asks that God “never” leave the souls that he indwells, and he repeats “never” to underscore the need for this enduring deliverance (19-20).  He continues the stanza by describing the Christians’ worship with the terms “always” (21) and “without ceasing” (23).  The final stanza conveys the request for lasting deliverance with a vision of ongoing sanctification until the soul is finally with God in heaven.

When I sing a hymn without much thought, it might seem to be a random collection of prayer requests or theological truths.  Seeing recurring themes in a hymn, however, helps me to sing it as a meaningful prayer.

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Love divine, all loves excelling,
Joy of heaven to earth come down;
Fix in us thy humble dwelling;
All thy faithful mercies crown!
Jesus, Thou art all compassion,
Pure unbounded love Thou art;
Visit us with Thy salvation;
Enter every trembling heart.

Breathe, O breathe Thy loving Spirit,
Into every troubled breast!
Let us all in Thee inherit;
Let us find that second rest.
Take away our bent to sinning;
Alpha and Omega be;
End of faith, as its Beginning,
Set our hearts at liberty.

Come, Almighty to deliver,
Let us all Thy life receive;
Suddenly return and never,
Never more Thy temples leave.
Thee we would be always blessing,
Serve Thee as Thy hosts above,
Pray and praise Thee without ceasing,
Glory in Thy perfect love.

Finish, then, Thy new creation;
Pure and spotless let us be.
Let us see Thy great salvation
Perfectly restored in Thee;
Changed from glory into glory,
Till in heaven we take our place,
Till we cast our crowns before Thee,
Lost in wonder, love, and praise.

A while ago, I was amazed to learn that one of my friends, who is also a colleague, sends a small birthday gift to each of his students. And he has hundreds of students.

I try to avoid measuring success by comparing myself to others, but learning about my friend has reminded me that I could do more to reach out to individual students.

I have 32 academic advisees. Although I do not send them birthday gifts, I do want at least to give birthday greetings on their birthdays. Something that helps me out is using an internet reminder service. Such a service is an organization that sends me a birthday-reminder email for the appropriate day.

I understand that hallmark.com has a reminder service, but the advantage of birthdayalarm.com, which I use, is that I can enter multiple names and birthdays at once (on one screen).

The benefit of these reminder emails is that since I have my email application open, I can act immediately to email a birthday greeting to the student. (I know, a signed birthday card would be better, but an unexpected birthday greeting from an academic advisor can still be special, even if it is electronic.) I also use the service for reminders about birthdays and anniversaries of friends and family members.

An additional benefit is that the service saves me the work of writing down special days in my calendar every year. The next year that such a day rolls around, the service does the reminding for me.

Another thing that I like about birthdayalarm.com is that I can change my settings for how many days ahead of time that I want to be notified. For example, I can be notified one week before the birthday and then again the day before. Being notified a week in advance allows me to send a package to family members in advance.

The system will not make up for laziness that is part of human nature. It is certainly possible to ignore the email or to move it aside into the to-do folder, which should probably be given a more realistic name such as the “might-do” folder. I will avoid giving personal examples that would justify the name change.

I hope to keep finding ways to reach out to my students or my academic advisees in a more personal way. But a birthday greeting from an academic advisor is something small that might help to make the day a little more special for a busy college student.

This morning, I met with a group of friends to discuss a book that we read. This meeting was planned a month in advance, and we’ll meet next month to talk about another read. At the start of the meeting, we decided what book we’ll read for the following month and devoted the rest of our time toward discussing the book. We started the discussion by allowing each person to report his thoughts about the book: its organization, its progression, its emphases, and its contribution to the topic.

I found this time to be very valuable. The only other times that I have met with a group to discuss readings of books was for classes that I was taking. But I see the value in making this kind of activity a regular part of life beyond school.

1. It expands my sphere of interests. From the list of fourteen books that we chose from, the book that we read this past month was not my first choice–or my second or my third. But my interest increased by the combination of the accountability to get the book read and the excitement about the book by the friend who nominated it.

2. Meeting for these kinds of discussions keeps my mind active. I admit that I am spoiled. As a university faculty member, I get paid to research content for courses that I prepare. My level of study, however, depends on my initiative. If I limit myself to the same routine, I can become stagnant. By reading something that I’m expected to report on, my level of engagement in what I am reading increases.

3. The quality of my conversation among friends increases. Small talk has its value, but who wants to live on a fast-food diet? Gossip is even worse. I need a lot more meaningful and significant conversation with my friends. My wife read a great anonymous quotation to me one day this past summer: “Great people talk about ideas. Average people talk about things. Small people talk about other people.”

4. This activity reinforces values that my friends and I have in common. I am a professing Christian, and my friends who are in this group are, too, although the group is open to non-Christians. This morning, I found that we kept coming back to what we know to be true from the Bible. I really need God’s grace, and I am thankful that he uses friends as channels of His grace.

I’m looking forward to many things during the month of September, and my meeting with these friends is one of them.