A Glimpse Back in Time: Part 5

This is part 5 of a series of blogs about my first 3 years at Washington and Lee University.  Make sure to read the first 4 posts before this one, which picks up halfway through my second year!  Also, I realize a few parts might be a bit confusing because I tried not to use many names.  Just bear with me and rejoice in what God has done!  

Second semester of sophomore year, God really began to stir things up.  On the first weekend after Christmas break, one of my friends brought a freshman named Joy to the Prayer Room.  She cried through the entire meeting but finally explained that God had spoken to her over break and asked her to give Him more of her life.  At the start of the year, she had been drawn to some of the worldly influences of college but now she wanted to return to her first love.  And she did.  With all of her heart.  She came to the Prayer Room the following night and has come pretty much every night since.  She was the first to truly commit to joining us in daily worship and prayer and gave Chris and I renewed energy to continue on.

The following weeks were equally exciting.  People were getting saved right and left, and they had powerful testimonies.  One friend heard God tell her to read a specific verse in a book of the Bible that she had never heard of.  It struck her heart, and she showed up in the Prayer Room as those of us already inside were praying for her salvation.  Surprised by her sudden entry, we transitioned back to worship as she sat on the floor, her black, mascara-laden tears soaking the pages of her Bible.  I didn’t realize I was staring until Chris’ chapstick hit me in the back of the head, causing me to turn around and see him frantically motioning at me to pray with her.  Moments later, I held her hands as she committed her life to Jesus.

Just two days later, her testimony helped her best friend to recognize that she also needed a real and personal relationship with the Lord.  The Holy Spirit was clearly gripping her heart, and that Sunday, I felt God leading me to sit behind her in church.  I don't remember a word of the sermon, but I do remember praying hard for her salvation, and rejoicing in tears when, at the end of the service, she prayed with our pastor to receive Christ. 

A few weeks later, both of them were baptized at Jordan's Point, and at their baptism, I really felt the Spirit of God and was touched by how He had answered our prayers.  It was a beautiful time, and Chris, Joy, and I were encouraged to keep praying for salvation on campus.  

Soon after that, we began praying for a freshman girl who someone else had asked us to pray for.  We’d never met her, but we lifted her up each night in prayer.  A week or two later, I was inspired to lead a Spanish Bible study.  It only lasted three weeks, but in those weeks, two Spanish-speaking students started coming to church with us, and the very girl who we’d been praying for showed up.  She didn’t speak Spanish but asked to join our Bible study, and not even realizing that she was the one we’d been praying for, I gladly welcomed her.  In the following months, she got involved with our church and also committed her life to Christ. It was a crazy time!

Yet in the day to day, prayer still seemed dry.  While God's hand was clearly moving in our lives and on our campus, the three of us in the Prayer Room often didn't really feel it.  Worshiping and praying for over an hour every night can be monotonous if you lose sight of the love behind the sacrifice.  But we persevered, and even during our prayer meetings, it certainly wasn’t always boring.  Sometimes friends came in to pray with us, and occasionally, leaders of other campus ministries joined in to pray during our meetings.  And sometimes we really felt the presence of the Lord as we prayed for certain things or rejoiced over the salvation of our friends and prayed for more to follow.

But perhaps the most dramatic night was when we attempted to rescue a wounded baby bird that we found next to its dead sibling right outside the Prayer Room door …Well, I suppose in reality, it was Joy that did the rescuing while I stayed at a distance, still horrified by the dead bird on the doorstep, and Chris tried to calm me down. But either way it was quite an ordeal. 

Eventually the school year ended, but since all three of us were staying in Lexington over the summer, we continued our prayer meetings through June and July.  More people than usual were able to come in the summer months, and we began to develop a bit more community amongst prayer warriors.  But summer flew by, and I was soon cleaning up the Prayer Room for the year, which took forever, not because of all the posters I had to take down, but mostly because of the baby snake that I encountered underneath one of the shelves.  What an ordeal... But anyway, that was the end of sophomore year.  Of course, many other exciting things happened that year, but that’s a story for another day.  So after July, I went home for the rest of the summer with half of my college years now behind me.  But God certainly wasn’t finished with me yet.  He's still chipping away that this little piece of clay.

To be continued…

Joy, Chris, and I 

A Glimpse Back in Time: Part 4

Sophomore year started off much differently than I anticipated.  All summer, I envisioned a glorious return to the Prayer Room where a crowd of students would gather to lift up harmonious worship to the Lord.  I thought it'd be like Spring Term of the year before, where the musty basement had come alive, with 8, 10, and 12 students attending each night.  But the excitement had died down, and one of our faithful prayer warriors transferred.  School got harder.  Everyone got busier.  And after a few weeks, it was back to just me and Chris. 

That semester, I entered a season of loneliness.  Suddenly, the things that had once brought me pleasure were no longer appealing.  I began to desire God more and more, and that yearning to know Him consumed every other desire in my heart.  And not just the bad things.  Hanging out with friends, watching movies, and even reading novels no longer seemed worth pursuing in the face of a relational God of the Universe that I could get to know.  God was answering my prayer for more of Him, but it was difficult because few could relate.  People didn’t believe that I would actually rather sit by myself and read my Bible than attend a game night with friends.  But that's how I felt, and at times, normal, everyday conversations seemed so shallow and pointless that I wanted to explode.  Although my lips stayed sealed, my heart would cry, "I don't want to talk about homework anymore!  I want to talk about Jesus!"  He was drawing me away, and I think He really enjoys such seasons, though they may be painful for us.  (If you’re really interested in this, check out The Saint Must Walk Alone by A.W. Tozer or Apostolic Loneliness by David Sliker.)

So I was lonely.  But that didn’t mean that I was disengaged from what was going on around me.  God was really moving on campus and I was not blind to that.  Three of my friends got baptized in September, and one of them hadn’t even known about the baptism.  She’d been praying for over a year about getting baptized, though, and happened to run into us when we were on our way to the river, to a spot appropriately called “Jordan’s Point.”  Just a few weeks later, another girl who I’d been talking to and praying for accepted Jesus as her Savior.  She's from China and didn’t know much about God before coming to W&L, but now she loves Jesus, and I’m so thankful that I’ve gotten to be a part of it.  These events and others made it impossible to believe that God was ignoring our cries.  But at the same time, I struggled with understanding why no one would join us in the place of prayer.       

I think this piece that I wrote during Christmas break of that year helps explain what we were experiencing.  It describes a detailed vision that Chris received during that fall semester.  In the vision, the Prayer Room was like a prison that God had put us in.  But instead of breaking down the walls by our own strength, we needed to dig deep into God.  Check it out: 

Darkness is closing in.  Deep, deep darkness.  It’s all around.  You can almost taste it.  And with the darkness comes despair, anguish, and wickedness.  It brings great blindness and confusion.  The darkness has reigned for so long in this place that many people have forgotten the Light, most people even. 

They don’t realize what they’ve lost.  Some of them have actually come to love the darkness.  They embrace it and relish it with every breath, and the mere thought of the Light is completely unappealing to them.  Others are deceived.  Wielding a lamp or other cheap imitation of the Light, they think they are clinging to what is good.  But they have forgotten what the Light truly is. 

My heart breaks for these people.  Their satisfaction is counterfeit and they are missing out on true joy. I suppose it doesn’t look like joy, not while we’re in this cell, at least.  But it will one day, when the Light suddenly bursts forth to reconquer this place.  Then they will see.

I can’t blame them for losing sight of the Light.  The darkness is powerful, and it seems to control everything.  I hate it down here, often longing to return to a life where everyone loves the Light, or at least pretends to, a life where the darkness cannot parade before the people but must instead hide in the shadows.  I ask myself all the time why God sent me to this dark, dark place.  Yet part of me loves it here.  Because I’m being changed.  For the better. 

Even while the darkness seems overwhelming, every now and again, a tiny ray of Light slips through the cracks of our prison, reminding us that the hope we cling to is not in vain.  I love those tiny rays and the encouragement that comes with them.  When everyone else abandons the Light, forgets it, and gives up hope, we hold onto those little bits of sunshine, and we keep fighting.  Well…sort of.

In one sense, we’ve stopped fighting.  At least, the physical battle.  But believe me, war is still raging.  The battle has simply changed.  We used to pound the walls, beating the cold, metal bars until our knuckles were raw.  Our goal was the same: escape, returning to the Light.  But beating metal bars with fists of flesh never did a thing.  We'd eventually collapse, exhausted, without an inch of progress or a dent in the bars to show for it.  We’d get up and try again the next day, but still nothing.  And the darkness kept closing in. It thickens even now.

So we stop “fighting,” but now what?  We must get out.  We MUST.  This darkness CANNOT win.  Then what do we do?  We dig.

Now trust me, that wasn’t my idea.  I tend to go for quick and easy solutions, and digging our way out of this cell is certainly not going to happen overnight.  However, it’s the only way out. 

It’s hard to even start digging.  I look down at my hands, still clenched and a little bruised from beating the iron bars.  Inside each curled up fist, I feel all the things I still hold onto: the anxieties, the distractions, the fears, the pride.  I glance at my shovel.  Can I hold all this at once at once?  Perhaps I can dig with one hand and clutch all these other things with the other.  No way.  The shovel will be too heavy.  I have to let them go.  But I don’t want to.

I stand there for a while.  This is pointless.  We have to get out of this prison, and that means that we have to dig.  So one finger at a time, with some supernatural help, I pry open my hands, fixing my mind on the Light and letting everything else fall to the ground.  It’s harder than it sounds. Painful even.  As all these things I used to cling to hit the dirt and scatter, I resist the urge to snatch them back up.  I look at my empty hands and realize that I actually feel lighter, perhaps more free.  But I can’t stop here. 

After what seems like ages, I pick up my shovel.  As I press it into the ground and raise up the first scoop of dirt, I wonder how long this is going to take.  But I guess it doesn’t matter.  It’s the only way out, so we have to dig or let the darkness win.  And we’re going to have to dig deep.  Really, really deep.

It’s been about an hour, and my body is already begging me to stop.  The shovel is heavy and awkward.  My back aches.  My arms, which are pretty weak to start with, are screaming, and I’m hot and tired.  The worst, though, is my hands.  The blisters are emerging already, and I know that my palms will soon be rubbed raw.  I consider laying down the shovel and gathering all those things I worked so hard to let go of.  They were much easier to hold, much more comfortable.  But the Light keeps beckoning.  We can’t quit.

At least I’m not alone.  I give thanks for that every day.  Multiple times.  Yet even as I give thanks, it’s easy to complain.  Why is it just the two of us?  Is there really no one else who will help us dig?  There isn’t one other person here who’s willing to go deep? Lots of people think they’re willing, even say they are, but no one sticks around.  That took some getting used to.  We’ve had to learn to just keep digging. 

At first, I was really distracted by the others.  I still am sometimes.  First, it was excitement.  Someone would come into our cell, pick up a shovel and start digging with us.  I thought they’d stay forever.  I cried when they left.  Then, it was anger.  The first time some kid dropped by to tell us, “I love what you guys are doing!  Keep at it!” I wanted to hit him.  Really?! If it’s so great, why don’t you give us a hand?

After that, it was a bit of desperation.  Every time someone passed by, I tried to convince them to come dig with us.  I wanted to show them that it’s worth it even though it’s hard.  Maybe it was because I was lonely, but at least part of my motivation was wanting them, too, to experience the Light that we so dearly love.  Some of them showed interest, would even dig for a while, yet no one truly believed in escape, in the revival that we knew the Light will bring forth.  So they didn’t endure. 

Several times I was determined to make them stay.  I laid down my shovel to grab their hand, stopped digging to plead with them some more.  But they didn’t get it.  The darkness continued to cloud their understanding, and I couldn’t force them to stay.  I should have just kept digging…

We’ve been learning that we can’t pour our energy into these others if they’re not really committed.  We just have to dig.  And dig.  And dig.  Deep.  It doesn’t get easier.  Actually, it probably gets harder.  As we go deeper, the soil turns to hard clay, our bodies grow weak and weary, and our hands start to bleed.  Worst of all is the battle in our minds.  “Quit!” screams a voice within.  But we can’t.  What about the Light?

Somehow, though, as it gets harder, the digging also gets sweeter.  Our hearts are filled just as our hands were emptied.  We can soar even when we feel weary.  Escape is ever nearer.  Breakthrough is coming.  And we can hear, albeit faint, the river that lies beneath this prison, the river that will take us out of the darkness and back to the Light.

I wonder yet again how much farther we have to go, how much longer darkness will reign over this place.  When will people realize the goodness of this life we’ve found?  Who will be first to take up a shovel and stay with us?  Will it be the girl that digs with us for an hour or two every other week?  Or will it be the guy that stands outside and laughs at our foolishness, insisting that we should come drink a beer instead?  I think they’ll both have a shovel when this is all over with.  But how long?

I keep asking that question, yet I know the answer really doesn’t matter all that much.  Because whether we escape tomorrow or next month or two years from now, what we do in this moment doesn’t change.  Either way, we keep on digging.  We dig deep, and we don’t stop until darkness is conquered.  Because our Light, our GOD, is worth it.  And He’s with us all the way, never once despising His beloved prisoners.

Even crazier than the fact that Chris had this vision, so full of meaning and relevant to our experiences was the fact that, the next day, he stumbled upon this verse “For the Lord hears the poor and does not despise His prisoners" (Psalm 69:33).  Even now, there are times when I feel like God has imprisoned us at W&L, but He has not forsaken us. 

To be continued…