“There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.” – Romans 8:1-2
The sheer release, the omnifying conceptualization of the totality of the semester, arrived and, without fanfare or pomposity, passed as a perishable snowflake falling before you – a stark reminder of the beauty and the frailty of the reality that surrounds life. In the moment, you realize that your senses had almost become numb from the constant toil, and you scramble to collect your thoughts, to pull from the void that which keeps your life pursuant to the will of God. With clinched hands, nails dug into the meat of that which is about to be lost, you hold on for fear of losing all that is of value. One by one, you grab them, a snow globe of thoughts shaken, recollecting them, trying to embrace that which had seemingly vanished, and return to their former place. Yet, amid the storm, relevance and positioning had been rearranged as if by chance. But we know better.
To lose oneself in the pursuit of an agenda placed before us – a goal, a resolution, a tacit requirement; whatever it might be, it requires a level of focus that consumes our lives that pushes out everything we call living. Everything but the granite, the resolve that resides within, the flicker of hope, for without, we would be lost, is all that remains. This is how we often find ourselves at the conclusion of a season, a semester, a portion of life that was more than a grind. It was from this shadow that I had recently crawled, beaten, worn, but unfettered to carry on. But once we become free of that which had held us in bondage, we realize that the blessing of life is still there, the purest morning dew, sparkling like a diamond upon the cusp of the precious rose. It is a realization that He is faithful never to leave us, nor forsake us.
Emerging from beneath this boulder, it felt as if I had taken my first breath of life in a long time. And before I knew it, the Lord had placed before me a delectable portion, a reminder of why we do what we do in the service of ministry on a college campus. “The table is set before us in the presence of our enemies. He anointed my head with oil. My cup runneth over.”[1]
But to understand how all this unfolded, we must go back a day or so.
A few moments later, after my final exam, I found myself meeting with a young man who had unexpectedly come into my radar a few days earlier. But to appreciate this meeting, one had to go back to when the story really began.
It happened to be Friday night, one of those evenings when the time was usually taken up by a weekly meeting of the Ratio Christi Leadership team. Ratio Christi (RC), which means “Reason for Christ” in Latin, is a global apologetics organization that meets weekly on campus. On that particular night, the semester ended the day before. The students were embroiled in the first day of finals and preparation for the coming week’s exams. So, without fanfare and with a vague hope of finding at least one student with whom we might have a conversation, an RC colleague and I made our way to the campus dining facility, “Central,” as it’s known by the student body.
Upon landing at a table near the entrance, close to 6 pm, we surveyed the area. It was still early by student standards – they typically eat supper around nine. Settling in, it wasn’t long before we were joined by one of the Ratio Christi student leaders, Josh. Discussions started around plans for the break and the remaining finals. There was a certain feeling of renewed freedom in the air, like a fresh snowfall, an eagerness to partake in the unblemished beauty of that which promised excitement and escape from the tedium. A few minutes later, another leader named Great showed up, and not long after him, two more members joined. Before we knew it, we had a lively discussion underway. God had truly delivered.
But the best was yet to come.
Out of the corner of my eye, Elias sat not far away. Elias, a tall, thin, very well-mannered young man, was an undergrad who had been on our periphery the entire semester. He was the kind of student who always asked challenging questions but kept accepting Christ into his life at arm’s length. Motioning for him to join us, Elias came over, accepting the invitation, but said that he was with his roommate. “Well, invite him over, you both are certainly welcome,” I responded with a sincere gesture. He smiled and nodded, agreeing, and returned shortly with a trim, neat young man named Brent.
The group welcomed Brent, and the common communal questioning began: where are you from, what’s your major, what year are you, and so on. Since he was Elias’s roommate, we all had to know, “Do you have the same reservations as Elias about accepting Christ into your life?” Someone asked the elephant in the room question out loud, perhaps it was me, and Brent quickly responded that yes, he was a believer. There was a collective sigh from the spontaneous gathering. Elias grinned broadly but kept quiet. Then, curious and with some intention of wanting Elias’s itch to be scratched, I asked the young man, now sitting directly across from me, if he had any questions about faith that he might like to ask the group. Hey, we were apologists; we needed a good Friday night challenge. So, in true Godly fashion, he asked a question that more than caught my attention: “How can I become more vulnerable to God?”
He was looking directly at me, his lips twisted in a half-smile, half-grimace, but his eyes never wandered nor wavered in their intensity.
There was dead silence as a momentary lull fell over the table. Behind smiling faces, everyone was scrambling, trying to consider the source and intention of what he said. After what seemed an eternity, someone asked a clarifying question, to which he responded, “How can you become more vulnerable to God?”
From that point forward, the other students jumped in, eager to swim in the river of theological discussions. We had just walked through a semester in a mostly arid, academic desert; there were no more apologetic club meetings, and now, thanks to a more than thought-provoking question, we found ourselves standing on the shore of a beautiful, crystal-clear river flowing with life and love. One by one, we dove in and swam with all our might. The water was more than refreshing – it was exhilarating, the current swift. It felt like it had been an eternity.
Later that night, during prayer, Brent came to mind. The still, small voice said there was a need: someone crying out for help but hesitant to ask. Sometimes thoughts become more than ethereal contemplations, making us say, as Johan Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust, “Verweile doch, du bist so schoene,” meaning, “Stay for a while, you are so beautiful.” But as fleeting as the snowflakes fall upon one’s lips, they are gone before we can savor their meaning for our lives. However, once in a while, God whispers a gentle reminder, pulling back that ethereal consciousness into the moment, making us aware of the obvious, allowing one to hear the cry for help in a busy world. Like a hand reaching out from the depths of an avalanche, smothered by life, we find them, and thanks be to God, we grab onto that desperate soul who wants to cling to life but heretofore didn’t know how.
Looking back, God’s voice was anything but still. There was a particular urgency to it, so much so that it forced me to immediately reach out to him. Being late on a Friday evening, one might be lucky to get a response from a student on social media by the following Monday, if then. But to my surprise, he quickly responded. It was an obvious sign: a hand reaching up from an avalanche in the snow, grasping for air, for survival, the cry to live.
A weekend and one final later, we sat down, and we quickly got to the heart of the matter – my instincts, and God’s nudge were correct, it was far beyond being vulnerable. It was even beyond the next question, how one could turn away from the sin in their life. As we dug into the answer to question after question, more layers of a life of depravity and isolation emerged, offering insight into the life of a young man who was near a breaking point.
That still small voice turned out to be a megaphone.
We read through Romans 8, and I reassured him that the scripture clearly says there is no condemnation for those who truly follow after Him. Then, feeling as if he needed to know that God was with him, even when he least realized it, we turned to Psalm 139, where I asked him to read it through slowly and methodically, with great care. As I patiently watched and waited, he read the entire Psalm. When he finished, he looked up at me and, with a look of somber reflection, said, “Wow. I never thought of it like that. He’s really with us no matter where we go, no matter how hard we try to flee from him. He is there.”
“Yes, and Amen,” I replied. “Do you think it was just a coincidence that we met in the dining hall Friday night? Do you realize that since Ratio Christi didn’t have a meeting, it was more likely for me to go home than to hang out on campus?”
His smile grew when he said, “Yeah, and I don’t often go with Elias to Central either. That’s crazy!”
“Ain’t it? You know, Brent, God is already there with you, waiting for you to open the door. You being vulnerable is not the question; rather, because of who He is, you can’t help but be vulnerable. All you have to do is open the door.”
We continued to discuss how it is no coincidence that God is ever-present in our lives; we only have to open our eyes and acknowledge his presence. “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten, full of grace and truth.”[2] Beholding him, realizing that He is there, the creator of the universe watching over us – truly, there is no greater sense of vulnerability one might have. If that’s not enough, we only need to turn to the Psalm, “O Lord, You have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up…Where shall I go from Your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, You are there!…even there Your hand shall lead me, and Your right hand shall hold me.”[3]
As the time passed, we talked about many other topics, and Brent shared his life’s story, and it quickly became apparent that we needed many more of these sit-downs. As a measure of recompense, earlier in the week, I had mentioned to several people the need to regain focus on discipling next semester. And before I knew it, there sitting before me was a young man who badly needed just that. Unbeknownst to me, before we ever sat down, my prayers for God to help me find direction in discipling were answered; God had already had a name for my ever-growing list.
In The Princess and the Goblin, George MacDonald wrote, “the fire did not hurt him; it only purified him,” referring to the character Curdie’s experience of a purifying transformation. Similarly, the trials of life become our spiritual formation, building character, refining us into the person God intends. Once we emerge from those trials of life, the fire, we find the weight lifted, our lives given back to us, but now, the purpose for which we had sought to strive shifted, and suddenly, we find ourselves standing before a great treasure – the opportunity to begin anew.
As a fleeting glimpse of a golden, mythical sunrise passes, so do those occasions when we are afforded the chance to pour into the life of someone who came close to the precipice of life’s edge. When we ourselves have been refreshed through the purifying fires, gleaning away all that is superfluous, the essence of life becomes much clearer. We become an asset, whether we know it or not, to those around us who need caring voices to guide their lives. If only we would listen to that still small voice.
In this season of new beginnings, listen to those voices around you and be ready to throw a lifeline to someone in need. Pull up your sleeves and get ready.
The fields are truly white with harvest, but the laborers are few.
[1] Psalm 23, KJV Bible
[2] John 1:14 KJV Bible
[3] Psalm 139 KJV Bible
