Freshman Reflections From Belmont UniversitySample

Day 2 - Community Community is a group of people that shares. Whether they share beliefs, goals or simply space, a community always has some common, centering purpose. As our mission statement says, Belmont University is a student-centered Christian community providing an academically challenging education that empowers men and women of diverse backgrounds to engage and transform the world with disciplined intelligence, compassion, courage and faith. Belmont’s common, centering purpose is its students. Students, We are the center of the institution, the reason it functions. What will then center us? As Christ is praying for His disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane, He reaches out to God for unification among those that believed in Him then and all future believers. John 17:23 provides a glimpse of His words to the Father. Christ says, “I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” This is a mission statement for Christ’s church, which as God the Father is in Christ, we as Christians will be in Him, completely unified in the eternal love that covers us completely. However, it does not stop there. Our education from Belmont and our status as Christians are not simply badges to pass us on to the next phase of life or eternity. Through these experiences we are supposed to go out to engage and transform the world. Proverbs 18:24 says, “Some friends play at friendship, but a true friend sticks closer than one’s nearest kin.” Find those that make you the best you. Find those who you can make better versions of themselves. Care for one another, and uplift each other. Hold each other accountable. Live out your truest passions, develop new conversations, and study what you will. Do it all with love as your center, the love that is present as we are in Christ and as Christ is in the Father. My prayer is that you all will know Belmont as more than a space to passively coexist with others and that even beyond differing beliefs and ideas you incoming freshmen will form engaging, transformative community here and beyond. RASHAAN JILES RA, Maddox Hall, Junior Commercial Music major