By the time you read this, finals will be over, commencement will have commenced, and all but a small handful of students will have already packed everything up and moved away from the summer. The campus looks a little like a ghost town in late May.

Now, there are still plenty of people around—faculty finishing up their work before departing, year-round staff and administration transitioning to summer responsibilities, and the occasional squirrel wondering where everyone else went—but the soul of TLU, our students, are gone. It’s as if the campus has entered a three-month-long pregnant pause.

Now, this in no way means that our students are just twiddling their thumbs for summer. Right now, I am with a travel course of students who will spend the rest of the month of May in Holden Village in Washington State. Others are studying abroad all over the world, soaking up as much of a new culture and people as they can in an all-too-short span of time. Many are starting summer jobs so that they can continue to pay for their stellar education. And some are enjoying a much-deserved rest.

Whatever our students are doing this summer, they need your prayers and support. Reach out to them, take them to lunch, slip them $20 when no one is looking. Whatever you can do to fill their cups with love this summer, please do it. May they (and you!) feel the tie that binds us strengthened over the next few months, and may our church be stronger for it.
Happy summer!