Fellows Retreat

Nine days into the Fellows Program and I’m already marveling at how quickly the time has flown.  So much to say, so much goodness and blessing.  Where to start?

I suppose with the beginning.

Last Tuesday through this past Saturday we fellows ventured off to Southwest Pennsylvania for a retreat.  Unfortunately it was not ours to enjoy beautiful end-of-summer/early-fall weather; Tuesday and Friday blanketed us in a chilly, dreary rain, although things dried up a bit in between allowing us to venture out for ultimate Frisbee, corn hole, or a swim across the lake.  Otherwise we kept indoors and enjoyed cards and board games.

In addition to recreational activities, we took part in community building exercises, times of group worship and prayer, periods of individual meditation and devotion, and what turned out to be one of my favorite parts of the trip, the sharing of each others’ testimonies with the group.

As Christians know, one’s testimony is the story of how Christ has wrought change and redemption in one’s life.  Such stories leave no room for idle, small talk.  Rather, testimonies cut to the very marrow of life, with all its struggles and joys, hopes and fears, doubt and faith.  My heart went out to those of my new friends who had endured much pain and sorrow during their lives, and yet was gladdened to hear how through these difficulties, they had come to know the freeing power of God’s grace in deeper and more meaningful ways.  I kept finding myself thinking, “me too.”

What surprised me most was the ease with which just over a dozen fellows, otherwise complete strangers at week’s outset, grew to be genuine friends in only a few short days.  Of course, the sharing of our testimonies greatly facilitated this process, but even in time spent around a meal, on a run, or overlooking the lake was fruitful for the soul.  To talk philosophy with Sam, poetry with Matt, sports with the other Matt, or theology with the quietly tenacious Seo Yoon, to run with Garrett, swim with Freddie, or to be ferried in a canoe by Hunter, to compare Virginia college experiences with Michelle and Leigh Anne, or to enjoy the Southern charm of Annie, Carra or Jeff, to cook with Kim and share Tribe Pride with Jill, or to come darn close to beating Bill in an intense game of risk—these moments powerfully bonded us together.

All I can hope is that the rest of they year doesn’t fly by as quickly as those first five days did.

Goodbye Williamsburg

This weekend I worked my final day at the Colonial Williamsburg Visitors’ Center.  Friday night was my last work shift; Saturday afternoon I showed up for a staff party.  After having worked there for almost a year, my emotions were mixed when it came time to say goodbye.

There are certainly facets of the job that I won’t miss.  I won’t miss the incessant fife-and-drum music that plays all day, everyday in perpetuum—I now sometimes hear these tunes in my sleep.  Nor will I miss the endless process of stocking shelves and making sure that every widget is perfectly aligned so as to maximize a potential buyer’s urge to grab one and buy it, although this chore is somewhat gratifying to my OCD tendencies.

And while I believe very much that vocationally I am a people-person, neither will I miss having to paint a smile on my face and act thrilled every time a customer approaches the cash register to check out.  In retail, this discipline is a must, which I made sure to do, but sometimes it just felt fake, like I was having to wear a mask, and I hate it when people are fake and wear masks.  I certainly believe that my experiences this past year were good for me and will translate into my career down the road, but I also know that I’m not a retail guy at heart.

But it wasn’t for the things that I won’t miss that I almost got choked up as I left the Visitors’ Center on Saturday.  No, it was the thought of saying goodbye to people that I had come to love that tugged at my heartstrings.  I have grown attached to each one of these people in a special way, and I know that they had grown to love me, and now the necessity of circumstance required that we could no longer daily see each other.

Saying goodbye.  We live in a world of change—a world of mortality.  Someday we each must say goodbye to those we love, and our souls cry out at such a cruel fate.  It is in these moments that ever so briefly I yearn for Heaven and wish for reunion some distant day in the future.  Such a hope comforts my soul.

I don’t mean to be so dramatic: I fully expect to see my Visitors’ Center coworkers again—in this life—but it is often the transitions in life that force us to think more deeply than our hum-drum, predictable schedules do.

So I say “Goodbye” to my CW friends, my track friends, my Intervarsity chapter friends, and I say “Hello” to my Fellows friends.  Tomorrow I leave Williamsburg and William & Mary—this five-year chapter of my life—behind, and I embark on the dizzying world of Washington D.C.  Fellows Retreat, here I come!

Michigan Adventure

After a full year without stepping foot in the Great Lakes State, I finally returned home last weekend for a sweet yet brief few days.  My mini vacation wasn’t anything exciting or extravagant like a beach week or a trip to an exotic, foreign country—it was simply a trip home to my dear Michigan.  Yet the best vacations are those that scratch those deep heart itches.

I stayed with my oldest brother Jeff and his wife Val in Ypsilanti.  With ten years between us and paths that have taken us in different directions, I have not always been that close to Jeff, and so it was very good to spend four days with Big Bro hanging out, relaxing, playing board games, catching up, laughing—all the simple things in life.  Again, a good satisfying scratch to one of those heart itches.

The functional reason for my Michigan trip was to buy a car.  The Fellows Program requires that each fellow has a car up in D.C., presumably so that we can be self-sufficient in getting around without being a burden to our host families or each other.  And at age 24, it was high time that I get a car.  The problem is that I know cars like I know Spanish—not very well.  And as someone who is car illiterate, I knew I would be a little baby lamb among wolves the moment I stepped foot into any car dealership.  I needed a wolf of my own.  Jeff was my wolf…and he was a great wolf.

Friday ended up being a perfect day.  After a clean check-up at the dentist, we were off to car hunt.  We quickly found my new baby with everything but my name literally written all over it.  It was a beautiful used Buick, which should last me through law school and beyond.  Every part of the transactional process was seamless.  Even my unsuccessful trip to Angola, Indiana to try to finance my car through my own bank, Wells Fargo, gave me a chance to take my new car to a trusted mechanic in Coldwater for a good look-over.  That was priceless peace of mind that I otherwise would not have enjoyed without a trip to my own bank.  In the end, there were a few financing and insurance hurdles to overcome, but we were even able to clear these before day’s end.  Sometimes car shopping can take multiple days or even a week.  And so I was thrilled to accomplish all this in a single day.

That left the rest of the weekend for quality time and rest.  It was good to catch a meal with my former college coach who now coaches for University of Michigan.  It was good to catch a meal with my family in Pennsylvania during my drive back to Virginia.  It was good to sink my teeth into Val’s sumptuous cooking.  It was even good to watch some of Jeff and Val’s favorite TV shows with them considering that I have watched very little television this past year.

A couple times we played a particular board game called “Life: Twists and Turns,” in which the object of the game is to score the most life points.  Sometimes during the game, you buy a house or have a child, and these developments increase your life point score.  Or perhaps you draw a chance card that reads, “Your cat dies.  Lose 50 life points,” and so you lose life points.

Life points.  Kind of a funny notion, that the experiences that make up our lives could be quantified into numerical values, and that our goal should be to try to maximize that score.  Such a concept works well for a board game, less so for real life.  But if our experiences could be quantified into points, I know that my Michigan Adventure would be worth a ton.

Borrowed Time

I’ve been reading through C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters this summer as part of a Summer devotional through the Fellows Program.  Today I was reading chapter 21.  In this dialogue, Lewis makes the point that while humans often think they own things—property, possessions, even relationships—we are merely deceiving ourselves.  In reality God owns it all.

And, as Lewis points out, it’s easy to fall into this entitlement mindset.  We refer to “my house,” or “my mother” or “my computer.”  Maybe it’s “my money” or “my job” or “my life,” as though we are entitled to these things or perhaps we earned these things by our own hard work and rugged industry.  And we forget that we’re just stewards and these things are just being leased to us temporarily.  As Job says, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return,” (Job 1:21).

I spent some time hanging out with a fellow named Dante tonight.  Dante is a linebacker on William & Mary’s football team (go out and buy the latest NCAA football video game, and you’ll see Dante’s profile for W&M—you know you’re a big deal when you are featured in a video game).

Dante was sharing with me how blessed he is and how God has provided for him in amazing ways.  And Dante has realized that these blessings are not merely for him to enjoy.  God blesses us so that we might bless others.  And as Dante dropped me off tonight, he reminded me that we’re on borrowed time.  What are we doing with the time that God has given us?

What am I doing with the time God has given me?

Usually I think of it the other way around.  I think of my time and my day and about how I should carve out a little slice of time in my day for God.  But I should think of it as God’s time and the day that the Lord has made, and the question should be whether I can squeeze these other things on my agenda into God’s time.  And I realize that many of the things I do are certainly within the scope of God’s will like taking care of my body or going to work.  But as often is the case, much of it is mindset.

I know I’ve done this before, but I think I need to do it again.  I think I need to put a note by my bed—or at least the bed that has been leased to me—so that when I awake in the morning, the first thing I see is, “You are now on God’s clock.”

Because I’m on borrowed time.

Jehovah-Jireh

I keep discovering that God is a God who provides.

I’m starting to notice a pattern.  A few years ago with summer quickly approaching, I anxiously held my breath wondering whether one of my internship opportunities was going to open up.  A meaningful internship would be an important step toward law school on my resume; another summer at McDonalds would not be.  As the hour grew late, it was looking bleak, and then I received a call from Governor Granholm’s office.  What an opportunity!  This indeed was a step toward law school.

Then on the eve of last summer.  On the one hand, it was imperative that I make some significant income for my school expenses.  On the other hand, I once again needed something that would improve my resume on my progression toward law school.  I had several leads and was disheartened as each one folded.  What’s going on God?  Why not this one?  Why not that one?  Are You going to provide?  And once again, just as things were looking bleak, an opportunity far better than the leads I had been chasing suddenly opened up:  a summer as the Tibbits assistant box office manager.

This keeps happening.  And in the last few weeks and months, through the love and generosity of family, friends, and my family in Christ both in Coldwater and at the Chapel here in Williamsburg, I see God once again providing what I need.  As this Fellows Program draws near with the sizeable financial cost that it involves, I’d be lying if I said that I hadn’t quietly fretted, quietly wondered where the provision was going to come from.  What’s going on God?  I thought it was Your will that I commit to this program.  I thought this was where You wanted me to be next year.  How is this all going to work out?

Yes, I’m learning more and more that God provides all we need to do what He has purposed for us to do.  If God feeds the sparrows and clothes the lilies, surely He will provide for me.  Jesus instructs us, “ask and you will receive.”  Grammatically, this verse is more accurately rendered, “keep asking and you will receive.”  We must keep approaching the throne of grace and petitioning God.  And sometimes I wonder if I’m petitioning enough, but I know that even when we’re faithless, God is faithful.  Although I still have a ways to go to meet my financial obligations for the program, I have a sense of peace and assurance knowing that God’s blessing is with me in this.

I recall the words of a worship song that I grew up singing at the Coldwater Nazarene Church.  I didn’t understand the words then.  I’m beginning to understand them now:

Jehovah-Jireh my Provider

His grace is sufficient

For me, for me, for me

Jehovah-Jireh my Provider

His grace is sufficient for me.

My God shall supply all my needs

According to His riches in Glory

He will give His angels charge over me

Jehovah-Jireh cares for me,

For me, for me,

Jehovah-Jireh cares for me.

More Than Facebook Friends

A few years ago, Ravi Zacharias came to William & Mary to speak on campus.  Ravi was raised Hindu in India before becoming an atheist and eventually a Christian.  He has become a world renowned apologist making it his mission to argue for the validity of Christian theology against opposing belief systems such as atheism and other religions.

In reading his books and listening to him speak, he holds no punches.  He exudes self-confidence in the convictions he holds dear.  And he welcomes any objection, any question, and while he answers it with sincere love, there is an undeniable assertiveness about his demeanor.  And so when one student rose and asked a question during his campus visit, Ravi’s answer was surprisingly unexpected.  The student asked, “If you could ask God one question, what would it be?”

Ravi thought for a moment.  “I would ask Him why He made it so hard to believe in Him.”

Wait a minute.  In a moment of vulnerable honesty, the guy who was comfortably bashing atheism one moment would ask God why it is so hard to believe in Him?

Why is it so hard to believe in God sometimes?  And often believing in God isn’t so much the issue—why is it so hard to know God sometimes?  To know Him more?  And not knowing about God.  There is plenty to know about God.  From Sunday School to systematic theologies, Bible readings to sermons, it is easy to learn a lot about God, but to really know God.  There is the labor.

In our electronic, Internet age, its easy to see the difference between genuinely knowing other people and merely knowing about them.  I think I have over 500 Facebook friends, and there is absolutely no way I know 500 people on this planet.  In fact, the number of people I truly know on a deep, personal level I could probably count on my two hands.  It’s easy to accept a friend invitation on Facebook.  But if you really want to know someone, you have to be intentional.

And so sometimes I feel like God is my Facebook friend.  It’s interesting to see what His favorite hymns or famous quotes are or to see what He has listed as His political views, but then I have this yearning to go beyond all that.  I want to know who this God is and what His hopes and dreams are and what makes His heart heavy with sorrow and what gives Him joy.

And I realize in these moments that I need to be more intentional.  Text message prayers won’t do.  And I know it takes time, perhaps a lifetime, or more.  But therein lies the reward.  As I come to know the living God more and more, I realize that this isn’t some cheap Facebook status.  This is real.  This is reality at its rawest.  And the more I come to know God, the more I realize how mysterious He is, which only increases my yearning.

Cease Striving And Know That I Am God

Graduation, moving apartments, last class, homework, LSAT, wedding, full-time job, part-time job, odds and ends—it’s May and suddenly I turn around and it’s July.  What a whirlwind!

And then there is Psalm 46.  “Cease striving and know that I am God” (v. 10).  Striving and striving and striving.  There are those times in life when it seems that all it is is striving.  Sometimes we strive so much that we don’t even have time to know that He is God.  And it’s times like that that I often feel dry and parched.  I feel weak because I forget that God is my strength.  I feel vulnerable because I forget that God is my refuge, my stronghold.

Verses 4 and 5 of this beautiful psalm describe the City of God in which the Most High dwells.  The psalmist notes that God is in the city and the city will not be moved.  Charles Spurgeon asks, “How can she be moved unless her enemies move her Lord also? His presence renders all hope of capturing and demolishing the city utterly ridiculous” (Treasury of David).  If we are truly dwelling in the midst of that city, then it is illogical to fear.  So why do we so often fear, and more importantly, are we really dwelling in that city?

The psalmist has such confidence in God as to proclaim, “We will not fear, though the earth should change and though the mountains slip into the heart of the sea” (v. 2).  Sometimes a mere tremor is enough to send me quaking, like the other day when I realized at work that I had left the dryer running while no one was home.  For a while, all I could think about was coming home to find a giant ash heap.  Not that it’s good to leave unattended dryers running, but that’s hardly the ocean gulping up Mt. Everest.

I find myself needing to remember that, “The Lord of hosts is with us,” or rather, the Lord of hosts is with me. 

He is with me...

He is with me...

He is with me...

Lesson 5: Coming soon!

So, my life has suddenly become exceedingly busy.  Looks like I won't be able to squeeze in my last college lesson before the month is up.  But, I did want to create this place-holder post in order to keep all my Lesson posts in the month of May.  It works better for organizational purposes.  And with that, back to the whirlwind...

Lesson 4: We Believe What We Want to Believe

In college, I always enjoyed a good philosophy class.  Such classes had this aura about them, as though I was about to gain access to some hidden, pure truth.  And then, after an hour or so of class of steeping in higher realities of being, I would go grab lunch or head to practice.  Such ideas seemed to have little applicability to the rest of my day, except for conversation fodder.

Of course, one would assume that people who sit around thinking deeply all day would have some lock on the truth, but if that were true, that sure didn’t come across during class.  All this thinking power and inference making and deductive reasoning and yet people still end up on diametrically opposite sides of various issues and questions.  Is there a God?  What is the good?  (what does that mean?)  Some philosophy professors made it completely clear which side they supported and made every effort to convince their students to agree or else feel humiliated.  Other professors brilliantly erected and demolished competing arguments just to keep their students’ heads swirling.

In my Philosophy of Law class, one of the questions my professor explored was the question of whether lawyers are morally obligated to zealously advocate for their clients even if that meant doing seemingly immoral things to win their case.  On the first day of discussing this topic, he made a rock-solid case for zealous advocacy.  Impeccable.  Brilliant.  Pure Reason!  I’m pretty sure he had us all convinced or at least feeling pretty stupid for thinking otherwise.  During the next class though, he completely laid waste to the argument he made the class before and proceeded to erect an argument for why lawyers do not have a moral obligation to zealously advocate for their clients.  Again, Impeccable, Brilliant, Pure Reason!

Wait…huh?  What’s going on here?  Which is it?

Early in my college career with my faith growing afresh, apologetics played a crucial role in my intellectual life.  I was discovering that apologetics, which is the philosophical and intellectual defense of Christianity, helped address some of the troubling questions that cropped up in the world of faith.  I would read some apologist’s argument for God’s existence, or how an all-powerful, all-knowing, good God could be compatible with a world filled with evil, and I would think to myself, “Yeah, who could possibly refute this?  Impeccable!  Brilliant!”  And then I would read some atheist’s rebuttal argument, and if I were being honest with myself, I’d think, “That troublingly sounds pretty convincing too.”  I wouldn’t use the word “brilliant,” but then again, someone without a Christian bias—an atheist bias perhaps—probably would use the word “brilliant” to describe such an argument.

So what are we supposed to believe?  Or rather, what do we believe?

It seems to me that we tend to believe what we want to believe.  We humans are pretty good at constructing arguments to support whichever position we want to take on whichever issue we’re discussing.  Whether we are willing to admit it or not, every argument starts with an assumed premise.  Even empiricism, which claims to rely totally on experience without any assumptions, relies on the assumption of its own validity.  We simply cannot escape the necessity of taking things on faith, usually a great deal for that matter—theist, atheist, Christian, Buddhist, Democrat, Republican.  In fact, it’s quite possible that the degree of certainty we feel about our beliefs and the clarity of our reason is nothing more than an illusion to aid in our survival, which, if true, would delegitimize this whole sentence, and this whole blog post.

Fortunately the futility of philosophy has not left me as a total skeptic, or a total flake; I still believe things.  But such exercises have liberated me from the bondage of having to prove some of the most important things that I believe.  I don’t feel the need to prove that my parents truly love me; I simply accept it as given.  And I don’t have to prove my Jesus and the purpose and fullness He gives my life.  I just have to choose to live in that fullness.

I’ve discovered that if we spend too much time in the ivory tower, then we won’t get around to the business of living each day to its fullness and of hoping for tomorrow.

Lesson 3: History is not what happened, history is what we say happened.

Before college, history, as I understood it, was very simple.  History was a set of objective facts compiled into official text books.  All you had to do was read the text book to find out “what happened.”

In college though, I discovered this fancy concept known as historiography, which is “the writing of history.”  Historiography is a form of history all its own.  For example, not only is the complicated and divisive American Civil War part of history, but so is the way historians have written about it.  Historians from the North wrote about the Civil War differently than historians from the south, and historians living in 1870 wrote about it differently than historians living in 1970.  No matter when or where a historian is from, they just can’t escape their own perspectives and biases and prejudices and cultural values.  And so, Civil War historiography varies considerably.  Now things like dates and the number of men in such-n-such brigade don’t elicit much debate, but questions like, “What caused the Civil War?” or “Who was to blame for such-n-such policy?” are far more complicated.

A few years ago a friend encouraged me to read a particular book on Christian church history from the first century to the present.  He said something to the effect of, “This book tells the real facts.”  Of course, with Biblical and church historians ranging from conservative fundamentalist historians to secular atheistic historians, I was a bit skeptical that this one book had successfully encapsulated all the REAL facts to the exclusion of all the biased non-facts.  But the book sounded interesting, so I opened up to the introduction.

The author of this book acknowledged the many controversies and differences of opinion that have colored Biblical and church scholarship, but he insisted that rather than mere personal opinion, his account would be objective (aka this is what REALLY happened).  I had read enough, and I placed the book back on the shelf to continue collecting dust.

What are the REAL facts anyway?  Are the real facts what the writers of primary source documents said, who of course had their own biases and prejudices, or are the real facts what scholarly writers of secondary source documents say, who also have their own biases and prejudices, or are the real facts contained in high school text books?  (I hear that Texas recently adopted the use of text books which all but completely eliminate Thomas Jefferson from its chapters on early United States history because people on some Texas educational board didn’t like Jefferson’s ideological values.  Bias and prejudice? Check.).

Everyone has biases and prejudices, from Herodotus to that really arrogant church historian; and I have biases and prejudices too.  A historian, or anyone for that matter, is far more credible when he admits what his biases are than when he pretends to be objective.

Now I’m no relativist; I believe certain things did indeed happen a certain way.  And I’m no epistemological skeptic; I believe we can access the past.  But I recognize that it is difficult and some debates just don’t go away very easily, and for good reason.  For most of human history, we simply don’t have any video type records of what happened when, where, and why.  So ultimately history is not “what happened,” rather history is “what we say happened.”  And that story is constantly evolving and being refined.