As a college student, I still get to worry about really trivial life decisions. Should Taco Bell’s recommended “Fourth Meal” be a staple in my overall dietary habits? Can I pull off wearing the same pair of underwear one more day? These are things I get to worry about. As a senior in college, however, some of those less trivial life decisions have begun to present themselves. I have to think about where I am going to be next year, what I might be doing in that place, and how I am going to eat without a fraternity meal plan. In short, I have no earthly idea how to answer any of these questions, and believe me- I get plenty of opportunities to try. It is all anyone asks you as a second semester senior.
Lately, I feel utterly confused, anxious, frustrated, and lost. I sense an air of expectation around me that may or may not actually be there, but whose presence (or imaginary presence) closes around me like that foam/slime stuff they use to fix puncture holes in tires. People tell me that I don’t need to have my life planned out at this very moment, and I really do believe them- but it is so hard to rest in that when every other social and cultural force says the exact opposite.
A few weeks ago, I found myself scrambling like a short order cook with a stack of orders, trying to make any bit of headway. I could not shake the notion that I was completely adrift, not knowing where to look, what to look for, or how to look. Something changed, though. A pastor friend preached that God knows me by name. He loves me. God knows me by name. I bet I have heard, read, and said that a gillion times, and it never once actually registered. Until recently, I don’t think I actually believed it. And yet it is true- the God of the universe created me purely as an object of His love.
Back to one of those trivial life decisions. One of my friends needs a date to a fraternity Parents Formal this weekend. His folks are coming, which means he can’t just ask a random girl on a dare. The girl he is digging already has plans. The second girl he asked, a friend, will be out of town. The third girl, yes the third, denied him outright. Enter Girl #4. Girl #4, a wonderful lady I might add, knew she was #4, or at least #3, and still said yes! I couldn’t believe it. Fourth place verges on insulting.
God is a lot like Girl #4. C.S. Lewis touches on this crazy love in The Problem of Pain saying, “It is a poor thing to come to Him as a last resort, to offer up ‘our own’ when it is no longer worth keeping. If God were proud He would hardly have us on such terms: but He is not proud…He will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to Him, and come to Him because there is ‘nothing better’ now to be had.”
I have spent innumerable hours contemplating my future, strategizing and scrambling. After all my resources are exhausted and all my ideas fizzle into afterthoughts, I finally give up and admit that I need God. What blows my mind is that He is right there waiting for me, the last one in line, desiring only that I would experience His love and the freedom of Grace. I am so quick to rely on my own feeble attempts at planning my life, but as John Updike said, “we are radically imperfect and radically valuable.”
God loves you. He knows you through and through, and still He calls you beloved. I am beginning to learn how to take comfort and rest in that, even in the midst of great confusion. In college I always hear people saying, “Oh, I just love so-and-so to death!” Well, Jesus really does.
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There is great reassurance
Thu, 04/10/2008 - 12:01 — Wilson Oswald (Oz) (not verified)There is great reassurance found within the fact that “God knows you by name.” There are times when you let yourself and your community down; this is a simple fact of life. For example, last week I was in an intense Intramural softball game and I straight up missed an easy fly ball. I could have blamed it on the wind or the slicing action of the ball but when push comes to shove I missed the ball. Even though I had a great day at the plate and was tearing the cover out of the ball, every other time a ball came to me, even if I would have made a perfect play there is no real redemption.
Opposed to our earthly relationships, God comes running into the outfield of our lives and calls us off and catches the fly-balls himself. He yells, “Atta boy Wilson” or “No worries, Oz! I got it!” Martin Luther King Jr. understood that God was there in our crisis’s calling us by name. By looking through the lens of Martin Luther King Jr. we are able to see the value and worth of humanity is found directly in the foundational worth transcribed to humanity from God.
This week I watched the History Channel special “King,” and in this special John Legend covered a version of U2’s “Pride (In the Name of Love).” This song emphasized the exact fact the King found his worth of humanity in the significance of the divine. It is so easy to emphasize the differences in between humanity but it is hard to realize and emphasize the fact the god connects all of us. King emphasizes that God calls us “brothers” and that we are interrelated with all of humanity.
The Bob Dylan song “Blowin’ in the Wind” emphasizes this same message of the worth of humanity found within the strife and struggle of humanity. Lyrics such as “how many roads must a man walk down, before you call him a man?” and “how many years can some people exist, before they’re allowed to be free?” call us to recognize our worth as individuals and value as a community. King looks at many of the same themes where we are called to keep on moving forward calling humanity to "Press on and keep pressing. If you can't fly, run; if you can't run, walk; if you can't walk--"CRAWL." Just as in the film, “Joe Dirt,” where the main character, a man caught in the soul of rock and roll with his mullet wig, tells us to “keep on keepin on,” we must persevere by the spirit that God knows us and desires a relationship with us.