“Let the redeemed of the LORD tell their story” Psalm 107:2
I came into college as bright eyed and bushy tailed as you would expect someone who only dreamed of ever getting into Stanford would be. Years later, my friends would call me “super frosh.”
Need someone to go dorming? Hand me the cookies.Bible study? Let’s hold it in my room.
9am prayer meetings? Be there or be square. Heck, I even went on a scroo-your-roo specifically as someone’s “Christian date”. I checked all the right boxes, and I was encountering God in new and unexpected ways.
But by the end of frosh year, something in me broke.
My best friend from back home had been trying for weeks to call me, and when I finally picked up the phone, she came to me with a plan and questions I didn’t have answers to.
My best friend was suicidal, and I couldn’t be the friend she needed me to be. She’s fine now, but I couldn’t forgive myself.
Then sophomore year happened, and before I knew it, I had to drop the triathlon team and quit running because my doctor said that if I ran even more my leg might just snap through. Then something had gone wrong with my financial aid and I did not even know if I could make it the whole year here.
I couldn’t be a good best friend. I couldn’t be an athlete. I couldn’t be a Stanford student. It was a year of realizing all the things I am not and could not and could never be.
Fearfully and wonderfully made? Not me. Not like this. All I wanted to hear was “well done, my good and faithful servant”, but how could I when I couldn’t even hold myself together? For nights, my prayer was a strong, “God, heal me.” And a weak, “why did you make me like this?” shortly following.
And yet God calls me his. Calls me into his flock and reminds me that I am the one he left the 99 for (Matthew 18:12).
That even when I don’t think I have a voice, he provides a speaker (Exodus 4, 6). And when I cannot love myself, he loves me, and his arms are open wide.
There was no turning point. There is no single bible verse that changed my life. But there is the promise that God will never leave me or forsake me. When I cried out to God in sheer desperation, I didn’t get a resounding answer back, but if the Israelites wandered through the desert for 40 years, and Jesus waited 30-some years to formally begin his ministry, then maybe I could wait a little longer for resolution too.
Months of prayer and digging into the word let me hear the voice of the I AM a little bit better. It whispered in the earthquakes and hurricanes in my mind and told me that I am his beloved. That he hears my cries and knew how breathtakingly desperate I was for him-- for the rock of my salvation.
But while God was at work healing this part of me, I was breaking another part.
You see, when it feels like your reality is tumbling in, trust became a necessity, and I am so grateful for the ways my struggling watered the mustard faith of seed I had. But junior year, I started to ask why this trust wasn’t as easy for others, and then the question became about me: why are so few people hungry for Jesus like I am? Do people even love him? And in what I had told myself was holy discontent were actually seeds for spiritual pride.
And it became easy to disengage in community and to grow bitter at all the missed meetings and ghosted text messages and what seemed like empty prayers.
After all, it wasn’t community that stepped up when I was hurting. It wasn’t the Church checking in with me or showing my that they cared. My relationship with God became singular and insular.
So that community I was so desperate for four years ago? I started to believe that they would only disappoint and that I might as well just climb back into the ivory tower I built up for myself. Built higher. Built stronger.
But then there was always this rapping on the walls. A faint knock that I thought I could ignore but was always there. Jesus stood outside my castle, with the holes in his hands borne from the ones who did disappoint, who did betray.
Turns out, in building my tower, I forgot to make Jesus the cornerstone. I had been so fixated on the flaws of community that I failed to remember that Jesus, God incarnate, the great I AM, the maker of the heavens and earth, came into this world as a child refugee, lived as a teenage boy going through puberty (when deodorant was definitely not a thing), and died an innocent man betrayed by one of his best friends and humiliated by the ones he loved.
Why would the king of the universe choose to go through such heartache and sorrow?
For me. For us.
In our stubbornness and mockery and deceit, somehow God couldn’t bear the thought of heaven without us and so bought us a place as sons and daughters.
Us.
The Church.
In spite of its failures and mistakes, God moves through his people. We got here today because Christ moved through broken people. Jonah didn’t just run away from God—he ran in the complete opposite direction. Peter denied Christ three times, and David, a man after God’s own heart did some pretty terrible things.
Friends, I really am the least of all you.
I am the bleeding woman desperate for just a touch of the edge of his robe (Luke 8:43-48), the woman crying at his feet (Juke 7, John 12), the man beating his breast and crying out that he is not worthy (Luke 18). But if God can work in people like Jonah and Peter and David, then regardless of our imperfections, God’s narrative is so much bigger than we could think or imagine. His grace is sufficient, and his power is made perfect in weakness (II Cor 12:9).
By the grace of God, I am now learning how to forgive, how to heal, how to embrace community, but I fall infinitely short of an infinitely good God. And yet this distance is why Christ died. To show us just a drop of his ocean of mercy and grace and love—so much love. How else can I respond to such grace but with awe and worship and humility?
I want more of this God. This God of forgiveness and grace and love and infinitude. I want just a touch of heaven. Sitting at the base of his throne would be enough for him—the ends of his garment would be more than I could ask for. Yet Christ does me one better and calls me his daughter.
As I look towards graduation, I’m battered with questions like: how am I going to get paid next year? where am I living? Grad school?? Grad school. And with just as many opportunities, I have uncertainties.
At the same time, however, I look back on the past three and a half years of college—the past 21 and some years— and see a life colored in the deep maroons and navies, the brilliant pinks and oranges,
the shining emeralds and golds of God’s faithfulness in the midst of this sinful world and my own sinful actions.
I don’t know what fruit I will see in my final few months of undergrad, what fruits I might see in grad school, or even what fruits I will see in my lifetime. But if my time at Stanford has taught me anything, it is that the Lord is good, and his love endures forever. His faithfulness continues through all generations.
He stands at the door and knocks, and it is my hope and prayer that we have the courage and faith to open.