Carson Lien
Management
2-5-18
Management
2-5-18
Mentor Blog 1
At the beginning of this school year I started meeting with a man named Jim Craig. Jim is a long time friend of the head football coach here at Wheaton and that is actually how I got connected with Jim. I went up to Coach Swider and told him that I was looking for a mentor and coach immediately recommend that I meet with Jim. The first time I met with Jim it was awkward and didn't know if it was going to work out between the two of us. However, about halfway through the first meeting something was said that gave us confidence that this could work. Hunting. This word broke the ice and started the beginning of our relationship.
Jim and I meet every Thursday morning at 7:00am at Starbucks. It's great because every time I walk in he is sitting down with a coffee for me ready to talk. We talk about everything from hunting to the everyday struggles of being a Godly man. This last week in particular has been one of my favorite conversations. We started out talking about hunting like we always do, but transitioned into talking about love. We talked about the ultimate act of love. You see, God sent His one and only Son to die on the cross for our sins. We didn't deserve that. We deserve hell because of all the terrible things that we do as human beings. Thankfully though, God loves you and I so much that He sent Jesus to die for us. Jim said to me that is the ultimate act of love and he is absolutely right. Then he went onto talk about how we shows that same love to other people. We talked about how as humans we can do such a bad job at loving others. We are called to show this same love that God shows us, but we don't do it. As I was taking with Jim I expressed how much it confuses me that people wouldn't show this love to others. I even told him that I thought I do a great job showing this love to other people. Then I started thinking to myself.
As we all know, the student body and the football team don't have the best relationship. It has just been that way. When we came in as freshman, people told us to stay away from the football team or (for me) not to talk to people other than the football team. There is a gap between the two of us and not much love is shown to one another. As I was sitting down with Jim, this example came to my head and I realized how bad I have done not showing other students love. I was upset and disgusted with myself because here I am claiming to love God, but I can't show this same love I have for God to other members of the Wheaton community. I expressed this problem to Jim and I made a I promise to him that I will work on showing this same love to my brothers and sisters here at Wheaton. I am making you this same promise to you. I personally will work on showing this love to other students to bridge the gap between the football team and remaining student body.
All My Love,
Carson
Carson,
ReplyDeleteI really appreciate your dedication to bridging the 'void' between the football team and the rest of the student body. Though I am not on the football team (obviously), I have strong connections to it through my family. My uncle played football at Wheaton, and now his son is a senior on the team. This strained relationship has grieved me deeply because I know good people on the team, both past and present, and the separation seems so wrong to me. I applaud you for committing to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem, and I pray others on both sides will make the same commitment. As you said, we cannot claim to love God while withholding that same love from our brothers and sisters in Christ, and this applies as much to the body of Christ at Wheaton as it does anywhere else.
Carson,
ReplyDeleteI really appreciated reading this and could kind of relate to it in a different way. When I came to Wheaton, my dad who went here said the two biggest cliques are the football team and swim team (and maybe more so swim team because we mostly date more on the team so there's less branching out for even significant others). I see that a lot on campus when all my friends maybe minus a handful are on the team and I immediately search for teammates in classes to sit by. But I realized there does need to be reaching out to others that you're not immediately comfortable with, like you did with Jim. I'm usually pretty friendly with people and am open to meeting new people. But after I get comfortable in a group, I don't reach out after that. I need to work on that and I see that from your blog- must show the love of Christ, not the comfort of myself.