This morning I've been working on my application to be an RA here on campus next fall. Part of the application process requires that I write a 1-2 page essay about main things or people who have shaped my life. Being the semi-slacker that I am, I though I could pull up something from my past and perhaps use parts of it in my essay. In the process of doing so I began to realize something about myself and my life. My time here at Bethel has been a struggle, my whole college experience in general has been, but the beautiful thing is that God has been here in it all. Below is a clip from something I wrote freshman year...
This fall when I arrived at Bethel University, I thought I had my whole life planned out and knew what I was supposed to do with my life. Within weeks it all crumbles away until I was left searching for the very meaning my existence. It was then that God taught me that I needed to trust him in all things. Even though I had no major, no idea how I was going to pay for college, very few friends, and was homesick, he showed me that I wasn’t in control and if I surrendered everything he would take care of it for me. I just had to follow. If this is where I’m supposed to be (at Bethel), He’ll provided the money, and I believe He will. He also gave me the most amazing group of Godly friends that are so beyond what I could have imagined. They’re not just close friends, their family, brothers and sisters in Christ.
Money has been a constant struggle. I came here not believing I would stay more than a year. I distinctly remember sitting in the Great Hall while the president welcomed new freshmen who in four years would be graduating in that very same room, but even as he said it I "knew" it wouldn't be true. Now here I am 2 years later, back at Bethel despite my "wanderings". I just now realized something mightily important. I've been struggling with being Israel. How is this you might say...well let me explain. I often read the story of Israel and just can't understand how they can keep missing the point. God delivers them, they show disbelief, he provides, the build an idol, he shows them a miracle, they do things their own way. Why can't they just see what God's doing! Why do they forget every two seconds. I'm not going to get into the theology behind it all, but I do want to relate it to my current situation. Bethel is the wilderness, it is a place where God has led me, I don't know where I'm "going" on this journey, but I do know that a promised land (the rest of my life and hopefully a job) is on the . Why is it then than every time I get hung up on finances it seems like the end of the world, and I wish I was "back in Egypt". He delivers me, then a few weeks later I'm crying out for manna, it falls from heaven, and by the next semester I'm dry and thirsty, so he pours forth streams from a rock, but I forget after summer rolls around and...here I am again. God has proven himself so many times in my journeyed at Bethel-even just this week. I don't have any money-I mean none- to be able to pay for next semesters tuition. Logically that = no school, but I know this is where I need to be, this is where I'm called, and if I just get out of my own way God will have room to work like he always has. So this is me, leaping with faith, into next week. To the world it isn't wise, but I'm in the world, not of it.
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