Sean, Living with you and getting to know you this past year has been really sweet.

Despite the fact that I have trouble relinquishing by older age and RA status around you, I consider you one of my good friends. You constantly challenge me by the way you live and your natural deep empathy for others. Willi 3 is a special place to us. The wide hallways, exclusive setting, and small-ish number of people allows anyone who wants friendship to find it easily. In addition, the evolving culture of Williston means that, more and more, people who come to our beloved Nunnery want to be a part of something bigger and cooler than themselves. You are going to be the 3rd RA of this place. Last year Williston was a safe haven for guys to live there and branch out just a little from their already-formed close group of friends. It was great. This year is filled with men who want to yell, know everyone who lives by them, and experience what it means to open up and live intimately with others. What does next year hold for Willi 3? I dont know. But I promise you that its going to rock your world. Though I was not present at Pass the Torch last year, I was told it is proper to write up some thoughts to pass on to you. You and I have prolly talked through what Im about to say already, so I thought Id add significance to it today by reading a lot from Life Together and adding just a few exhortations of my own. Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate. The more clearly we learn to recognize that the ground and strength and promise of all our fellowship is in Jesus Christ alone, the more serenely shall we think of our fellowship and pray and hope for it. 30 It is really cool that RAs are so respected here at Wheaton, but a dangerous assumption sometimes creeps into the RAs job description. We sometimes think it is the job of the RA to take a floor of unacquainted younger individuals and change them into a beautiful group of disciples -- who then obviously know and love their RA.we want this as RAs, but the truth is our human love -- even though it desires and strives for such a thing -- can accomplish nothing of eternal value. Everything good is found only in and through Christ. Human love desires another person, his company, his answering love, but it does not serve him. Perhaps the contrast between spiritual and human reality can be made most clear in the following observation: Within the spiritual community there is never, nor in any way, any immediate relationship of one to another, whereas human community expresses a profound, elemental, human desire for community, for immediate contact with other human souls 32-33

Human love constructs its own image of the other person, of what he is and what he should become. Spiritual love recognizes the true image of the other person which he has received from Jesus Christ; the image that Jesus Christ himself embodied and would stamp upon all men. Therefore, spiritual love proves itself in that everything it says and does commends Christ. It will not seek to move others by all too personal, direct influence, by impure interference in the life of another. It will rather meet the other person with the clear Word of God and be ready to leave him alone with this Word for a long time, willing to release him again in order that Christ may deal with him. It will respect the line that has been drawn between him and us by Christ Thus this spiritual love will speak to Christ about a brother more than to a brother about Christ. It knows that the most direct way to others is always through prayer to Christ and that love of others is wholly dependent upon the truth in Christ. 3637 I do not know in advance what love of others means Contrary to all my own opinions and convictions, Jesus Christ will tell me what love toward the brethren really is 35 As only Christ can speak to me in such a way that I may be saved, so others, too, can be saved only through Christ himself. This means that I must release the other person from every attempt of mine to regulate, coerce, and dominate him with my love. 35-36 So what do you do with this? Its kind of daunting, but I want the same for you that I want for myself. I want us to be dependent on the Lord, and I want the guys on Willi 3 to be dependent on the Lord. Lets learn a little more each day what it means to let burdens drop from our shoulders. The Lord holds His children; when we try to hold them, they will fall to the ground sooner or later because our arms are weak and our human love leads only to destruction and pain. I exhort you next year to love the men of Willi 3 with Christs love, a love that is beyond our control and beyond and different from our selfish expectations. Some of the guys on the floor next year will want and need 1-on-1 time with you; they will want big events and intense spiritual discussions; they will confide in you and desire your advice. How does the Lord want you to love them in these situations? However, there will also be some guys who have a very full life already the best way you can love them is to do work orders, be continually present in the small interactions in the bathroom and hallway, and to always be praying for them. Ill end it with this: In thinking about all these things, I read John 15:13 in a whole new way I have usually thought about it in the way of actually dying for my friends. But listen to it now with thoughts of loosening our grip on others, of truly releasing the future of

others to Jesus, who was the only one holding them in the first place. This Word is heavy, a truth that screams at me and demands repentance even now as I write it. Sean, as you transition into being the RA of Williston 3 next year, I hope and pray that you can learn just a little more about what Jesus says in John 15:13. He says, Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. Next year is gonna be really really sweet. You are gonna learn a little more about laying down your human love for others, and Im so pumped that I get to be a part of walking through some of it with you.