Wandering at Night

“Dear Mom and Dad: College is hell.”  At seventeen, having been dumped at a large university where I knew no one, I thought I was entitled to adapt the “war is hell” metaphor.  Although I knew that taking exams was a far cry from getting shot at, I did see my dorm room as a kind of bunker, outsiders as enemies, and much of what was happening to me as grenades launched with, as the army says, “extreme prejudice.”

Things weren’t going well.  As a young Christian from a non-church family, I didn’t fit in anywhere.  I was too morally oriented for my partying friends and too non-conformist for my church friends.  I spent a lot of time in the evenings wandering around campus feeling sorry for myself. Why shouldn’t I?  I didn’t get the lead role in the campus play (what were they thinking?). I broke up with my girlfriend of one month and she started sleeping with my next door neighbor.  My parents were alcoholics. My best friends back home ignored me.

Feeling lonely one night, I walked down to the gym to see if I could listen in on a rock concert.  As I approached the door, I was confronted by college students wanting to convert me. The nerve! With their cheesy grins, they asked if I wanted to talk about Jesus.  I said, “Look, I’m already a Christian, now bug off!”  Then I walked away. I’m guessing I did not advance their motivation for evangelism.  

As the year went on, two things made a difference.  First, the spiritual part of me would not give up. I don’t mean this as some kind of pull-yourself-up-by-your-spiritual-bootstraps.  What I mean is that I learned that since I’m made in the image of God, I am designed to be with him. Nothing I did could change that fact.  No matter how depressed I felt, I wanted the emptiness to be filled by the Lord I had met. I had glimpsed the Most Real Thing, the transcendence of living in God’s presence.  The Lord kept calling my name. Second, an InterVarsity Bible study found me. I can’t say that I discovered it. Somehow I ended up in a dorm room with four guys, meeting at 10:00 pm once a week.  We laughed ourselves silly so often that the Small Group Coordinator came as a consultant to see if he could figure out what to do with us. The crazy thing is that three of us went on to leadership in the local chapter, and two of us went on to join InterVarsity staff.   

Though I did my share of wandering, God was faithful.  In my moments of despair, I usually forgot this. And although I still struggle at times to believe he is with me, I can now look back on my battle-weary freshman year and take confidence from the fact that God did not let me go.  

Our hope is built not on our sure-fire steps to success but on the gently persuasive spirit of a persevering God.

Romans 8: 38-39: For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.