Living Out Our Vocations

Dear Friends,

I am very proud to inform the readers of the CUI Magazine that Concordia University Irvine has fully reopened this academic year. Our campus is bustling with activity. Classrooms are full of eager students who are taking courses in person. Athletes are competing in an array of sports. Music and theatrical performances are playing for rejoicing audiences. And graduate students from across the country are engaged in courses remotely with a renewed sense of normalcy. Thanks be to God! Despite many challenges faced during these last two years, one note rings out as a clarion call: CUI is blessed by so many men and women who dedicate themselves to serving others each and every day, sacrificing their time and countless hours. Our community truly lives the double commandment of our Lord and Savior, to love God and neighbor.

What accounts for this communal spirit of self-sacrifice? As a Christian community, we are animated by the Spirit of our Lord to put others first. As a Lutheran community, we are inspired by our knowledge that each and every task—whether teaching or mentoring, coaching or advising, serving or supporting—is a holy act. This concept of vocation, formulated by Martin Luther during the Reformation, witnesses that God nearly always works through human beings to carry out His will. Thus, the mundane and daily tasks we carry out each day are how God carries out His will in the world. We are therefore the agents of His will and love as we serve each other. In this way the actions of our daily lives, as faculty and staff, become sacred. Over the last two years, whether each one of us could state it with theological clarity, the CUI community served collectively to carry out this holy task as we served each other sacrificially!

In this issue of the CUI Magazine, you will meet exemplars—faculty, staff, students, alumni, donors, and friends—who live their vocations each day to the glory of God. We hope and pray that these features both inspire and encourage you. Despite all the pain, sorrow, and anger these last two years have wrought in our communities, the Lord is in the midst of the Concordia community bringing His love and blessing through the hands and feet of the faithful faculty and staff of CUI.

For His Students,
Michael Thomas, PhD