Jasmine Obeyesekere Fernando

Jasmine is WSAP’s book club host and vocation specialist. She hails from Sri Lanka and has a thirty-year relationship with its national university ministry, the Fellowship of Christian University Students (FOCUS). She has also been involved with InterVarsity for twenty years. She has a BA (Hons.) in English from the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, and a MA in International Relations from Syracuse University. She loves writing about theology impacting real life and enjoys British, Korean, and Chinese drama. Jasmine lives in upstate New York with her professor husband and two teenage children.

Contributions by Jasmine Obeyesekere Fernando
By Amy L. Sherman and Jasmine Obeyesekere Fernando

Listen in on this fall book club interview as Women Scholars and Professionals book club host Jasmine Obeyesekere conducts an online discussion with author Amy L. Sherman where they discuss vocation, spiritual engagement, and personal congruence.

By Jasmine Obeyesekere Fernando

Are you troubled by the brokenness in every aspect of human life? Amy Sherman offers a vision of how our own passions, expertise and work can be used for God’s purposes in our world.

By Gordon T. Smith and Jasmine Obeyesekere Fernando

Professor Gordon T. Smith talks with us about vocation, spiritual engagement, and personal congruence in this exclusive peek into our spring book club.

By Jasmine Obeyesekere Fernando

Do you find it hard to discern your calling in the present, caught up either in nostalgia or hopes for the future? Gordon Smith shows us how God calls us in the "here and now" of our lives, however complex our immediate circumstances might be.

By Felicia Wu Song and Jasmine Obeyesekere Fernando

Sociologist Dr. Felicia Wu Song talks with us about digital habits, community, and spiritual formation in this exclusive peek into our fall book club.

By Jasmine Obeyesekere Fernando

Have our collective souls been spiritually shaped by the digital industry such that we are becoming people very different to the traditional Biblical ideas of personhood? Felicia Wu Song explores our profound attachment to the digital and gives us perspective to steward our digital habits well without giving us a set of rules to follow.

By Jasmine Obeyesekere Fernando

What is the purpose of higher education? How can we share Christian understandings of Calling and Vocation in ways that resonate with all stakeholders in the Academy? Thirteen professors motivate us to look afresh at our institutions.

By Dr. Vinoth Ramachandra and Jasmine Obeyesekere Fernando

Listen in on an exclusive peek into our fall book club as Women in the Academy and Professions associate Jasmine Obeyesekere conducts an online discussion with author and theologian Dr. Vinoth Ramachandra where they discuss suffering, hope, and the Christian life.

By Jasmine Obeyesekere Fernando

Do you struggle to understand God’s love amidst pain and suffering? Vinoth Ramachandra shows how God’s own heart of suffering allows us both to lament and to have hope.

By Jasmine Obeyesekere Fernando

Interested in learning why we are a racially divided country? Ken Wytsma shows how our history impinges on the present and our role in reconciliation. 

By Christina Bieber Lake and Jasmine Obeyesekere Fernando

Listen in on our book club conversation with author and professor Dr. Christina Bieber Lake where we discuss thriving in academia — even during a pandemic.

By Jasmine Obeyesekere Fernando

How do you thrive in academia? Dr. Bieber Lake gives spiritual insight and practical help for faculty to effectively live out their calling as teachers and scholars. 

By Jamie Ong, Caroline Triscik and Jasmine Obeyesekere Fernando

Listen in on our interview with Jamie Ong, environmental protection manager for NYC parks, as we discuss nature, faith, family, and enduring Covid-19.

By Jasmine Obeyesekere Fernando

How do we share our faith in a post-Christian context where public life is mostly secular and private life is very diverse? Os Guinness shows us how we can converse with — and even persuade — people who are not interested in what we are saying. 

By Kathleen Cahalan and Jasmine Obeyesekere Fernando

Listen in on an exclusive peek into our book club during the final online discussion with author and professor Kathleen Cahalan on Calling All Years Good.

By Jasmine Obeyesekere Fernando

Might each of our life stages be a calling? Are there multiple callings in some seasons? The authors offer a unique perspective on Vocation by suggesting Lifespan as the lens through which we can view our callings.

By Jasmine Obeyesekere Fernando

Did you know that women are vulnerable to violence during their entire lifetime? Through her extensive global travel, Dr. Storkey compassionately demonstrates what gender-based violence looks like on the bruised bodies of real girls and women.

 
By Jasmine Obeyesekere Fernando

What if the beliefs of our times that we take for granted are not true after all? Dr. Ramachandra gives historical and global perspective to understanding pressing contemporary issues in their contexts.

By Jasmine Obeyesekere Fernando

Interested in reading a woman apologist of C.S. Lewis’s caliber and era? Uncover Dorothy Sayers’s insights on Theology and Work from selected essays and discover the clarity and confidence with which she articulates Christian doctrine.

By Jasmine Obeyesekere Fernando

How can the work of Mother Teresa and her community speak to the University world? Through Dr. Poplin’s firsthand experiences, explore Mother Teresa’s vocation and discern your own. 

 
By Jasmine Obeyesekere Fernando

How do you develop a deeply formed Christian way of understanding the paradigms of your discipline? Dr. Garber teaches that “the stuff of our work” matters to God and is integral to God’s purposes in the world.

By Jasmine Obeyesekere Fernando

Jasmine Obeyesekere Fernando describes her lifelong friendship with a Muslim family and offers some encouragement in developing cross-cultural interfaith friendships of our own.

By Jasmine Obeyesekere Fernando

Jasmine Obeyesekere Fernando considers the connections between the Magis' search for Jesus, the pain of injustice then and now, and links with the modern academy.

By Jasmine Obeyesekere Fernando

We mourn the murder of people in Garissa, among them students from our sister movement in FOCUS Kenya — another grim reminder that in parts of the globe today, Christians are randomly killed...

By Jasmine Obeyesekere Fernando

Jasmine Obeyesekere Fernando invites us into her reflections on the grief she experienced when her father died twenty years ago.