Wayfinding with Jesus

Love, justice, healing and hope are landmarks that will help us find our destination — and understand the journey.

Jesus has come to show us the way. He points us to a landmark we would not be able to see without him.

It is out there, just beyond the horizon.

Something similar is happening at the University of Hawaii, a school with an enrollment of 48,373 students. This school is enormous, spread out across 10 campuses on four islands up to 330 miles apart.

That’s like having one campus in Washington, D.C., and another in Columbus, Ohio.

University of Hawaii students and visitors needed something to show them the way. So, in 2018, the campus at Manoa began to explore ways to honor the heritage of Native Hawaiians. This was important because the university is one of the most racially diverse schools in the United States. Over one-fifth of the student body identifies as Native Hawaiian.

The result is a new system of signs to help visitors and students navigate the campus. It is the first wayfinding system at an American university to include an Indigenous language, and it recently won a...