This past weekend, a friend of mine and Billy came to Morgantown to visit and to speak at h2o. Sarah Meehan was in my GCM staff training class this summer. Her story is quite inspiring to me, as someone who strives to let WVU students know about the Kingdom in which they can become a vital part.
Sarah was a student here at WVU a few years ago. She didn't know God and wasn't interested in knowing Him. She would say herself that she epitomized the 'typical' party student: always looking for a good time and willing to do mostly anything to find it. She immersed herself in all the parts of college life for which WVU is unfortunately infamous.
When she graduated, she came home for the summer, and a friend of hers invited her to a Bible study. She wasn’t into that stuff, but she respected her friend and went with her for that reason. The same friend got her a Bible as a graduation present. Sarah didn’t read it at first, but then became curious and started ‘secretly’ reading, not telling anyone what she was doing. She started with the gospel of Mark, thinking the stories were kind of crazy, but she plodded on.
After a while, she found that the inside back of the Bible had a section entitled something like ‘How to know Jesus personally,’ and when she read it, she realized she wanted to respond. She prayed what is sometimes called the ‘sinner’s prayer’ and asked Jesus into her life.
Sarah’s life, however, didn’t change overnight. She continued to party with her friends and do all the same things she did before (plus reading the Bible), but now she began to feel bad about it. When she asked her friend what that meant, her friend explained how the Spirit was now in Sarah’s life, giving her conviction and direction.
She continued in fellowship with other believers and in studying the Word and allowed the ‘gentleman God,’ as she described Him, to radically change her desires and outlook on the world. Now she has come on staff with Great Commission Ministries with me and Billy and is readying to go to El Salvador (she speaks Spanish quite well) to tell people there about the Kingdom.
Sarah’s story gives hope to me, for when she was at WVU she was like many students I come across now. If God’s Word can change someone like that in a way that doesn’t show up till after college, then maybe my efforts here have an impact beyond what I can see. Thanks Sarah! (And correct me with a comment if I got any details wrong!)
Thanks for waiting for the end of the story! (If you haven't read the blog just below this, you'll need to do that to understand this one.) I won't keep you in suspense any longer...
When Sarah, Colleen and I realized Misty didn't want to leave the car just yet and was interested in talking with believers, I could definitely feel an excitement and willingness to commit, as late as it was, to seeing through to sharing the good news with this interesting stranger.
Misty seemed encouraged to realize that she was with Christians, and she told us how we were different from her friends, gesturing vaguely to the college students mingling around the hot dog stand and walking down High St. She said at one point that her getting a ride from us didn't just happen by chance, and I definitely agree!
In the back of my mind I was a little worried that it was possible Misty might not remember too much of the conversation the next day (as I said before, she was more than a little 'under the influence'), but I proceeded to unfold a condensed version of God's story. I started with Creation and how we, humans, are the ones who messed things up and broke God's heart. We're the ones who introduced all the horrors of humanity and the proneness to depravity and other gods. Misty knew that to be true, and was very aware of the sin in her own life, telling us briefly of some hauntings of her past. Our hearts went out to her, and we continued to share.
She sat forward and seemed to be attentively listening, saying things here and there, and often coming back to the tornadoes in Kansas and that in the end days we won't be able to tell one season from another. She kept asking us when the end would be, wanting us to confirm that it was very soon, seeming to really believe that we knew the exact hour. We could only tell her that it could be any time, and that we need to be ready (to have accepted Christ) when it happens. So we tried to always bring the conversation back to what she personally needed to do to have hope, but she often despaired about the end of time, and when she did ponder what we were saying about having a relationship with Jesus, she seemed to lose heart because of her own sin, not believing God could forgive her for all she's done. Sarah and Colleen were particularly comforting during those times, I thought, speaking words of hope and encouragement. I knew that she probably wasn't going to make a decision that night, and she needed to be more clear-headed when she was ready. We were hoping that we were planting the seed, though.
After a little while, she asked us if we thought God would be okay with her having a cigarette because she wanted to try and calm down a bit, and we sort of chuckled and said that it was probably okay (God doesn't expect every bad habit to change overnight). But I asked her not to light up in the car, and offered for her to sit on our porch back home (we live just a few minutes away) where we could talk more. She appeared okay with the idea, but as we pulled into my driveway and the inside car light came on, it seemed to me that she maybe saw our faces fully for the first time and she got a little scared and wanted to leave right away. We comforted her and said that if she didn't want to sit on our porch, we could definitely drop her off to her brother's place back downtown, since that was where she was originally going. I just wanted to make sure she got through the door of a place where she could rest, so when we got back to High St. we asked where specifically it was. She told us that she was just going to meet her brother on the street, and though we were reluctant to just let her out like that, she was politely insistent and so we gave in. So we wrote down our phone numbers, told her to call us and invited her to h2o, which she was interested in coming to, and said goodbye. We watched her walk for a few minutes to make sure she was okay, but we lost sight of her in a parking lot as she was lighting her cigarette.
When we got back to my house (Colleen was spending the night), we were hopeful and prayerful that she made it to her brother's place okay and that even if she didn't come to h2o the next day that she would call us and want to talk more, because we didn't ask for her phone number. It's now Wednesday night and she hasn't called, but Sarah and I are still hoping for more opportunities to care for this hurting person. She told us where she works so we think we might 'bump into her' sometime soon.
Misty, if you ever read this, know that I shared this story here so that friends can pray for you and hopefully care for you as well. Please don't be embarrassed because you opened up so much to us; letting others in is the only way to let healing and trust begin, and that's just as true with God as it is with people. We're here for you if you need us.
I had an opportunity to share the King’s good news with someone who desperately wanted to hear it, but who could not yet believe that He could accept her in light of the way she’s lived her life so far.
Sarah, my sister Colleen and I were heading back into Morgantown late Saturday night (12.3.05) after a weekend in Erie, PA helping with the program for a Young Life Fall Weekend (which was a great experience; I think many high schoolers’ lives were touched). After we turned onto the Star City exit from I-79, I saw someone walking along the side of the road that goes down to the turnoff for the new University Town Centre. As we got closer, I saw it was a girl, and she had her thumb sticking out as she walked. I normally wouldn’t pick someone up with my wife and sister in the car, but I suppose I felt a little safer since it was another girl. Plus it was pouring down freezing rain. I suppose God had a hand in my decision as well!
Sarah and Colleen were sleeping but woke as I pulled the car off the road. I explained that I thought we should give this girl a ride. When she got in the back seat with my sister, she was softly crying, and we asked if she was alright or if she was hurt. She wasn’t hurt physically (thank the King!), but she said her friends deserted her out there. She also told us she was drunk. She began to warm up to us, telling us her name was Misty, and saying she now had a real respect for homeless people because ‘that stuff is cold!’ meaning the rain, but she used another word for ‘stuff.’ This made me naturally think to say that people being homeless in our world really doesn’t seem like the way it was supposed to be. Misty wholeheartedly agreed.
Misty proceeded to tell us that she was 21 years old and had a 2 ½ year old daughter, and that though she loved her daughter dearly, this was the first weekend in a long time where she had a night to go out and just ‘let loose and have a good time.’ Her night obviously hadn’t turned out quite the way she thought it would, however. We interjected here and there, but we mostly just listened as it seemed she wanted to talk some things out.
As we neared downtown, Misty started talking about the weather. Not just in Morgantown that night, but the tornadoes in Kansas, the hurricanes, and other odd or disastrous occurrences. She said that she read in ‘Revelations’ in the Bible that near the end of time, we won’t be able to tell one season from another (I haven't found this reference yet, but I haven't thoroughly studied Revelation) . I parked the car near the hot dog man on High St., ready to keep talking (it was a little after 1 AM) if she wanted, and she made no movement toward the door. When she referenced the fact that world will at some point end, she asked if we believed that.
I looked at her and said, ‘We in this car definitely believe that.’
More on this intriguing story in a near future blog...
Over the past few years I've become quite a fan of The Lord of the RIngs by J.R.R. Tolkien. I admit it took the amazing movies to really get me started (I now own the extented version box set), though I had read the prequel The Hobbit actually more than once before the movies came out and thoroughly enjoyed it. My brothers had read LOTR before the movies came out, my older brother all three books at least three times through thus far. So I finally picked up the book this year (contrary to popular misconception, the book actually is not a trilogy; it's one novel "sometimes published in three volumes" as the preface in my 50th anniversary edition notes) and I really love it. My brothers and others had always talked about rich it is and how much detail there is and how it feels like it could be something out of real history, add a few Elves and Dwarves. As I watch documentaries on Tolkien's life, I can tell why it's so rich: he spent his whole life thinking about it and developing it. He was always pondering things of Middle-earth, whether it be the functioning languages he created or the epic poetry telling the stories of his characters or the lengths of the reigns of his Númenórean kings.What an inspiring contribution to the art of the twentieth century! As a songwriter, I strive for the kind of depth and beauty Tolkien's work arouses in my heart. This desire reminds of one of our faith community's values: "creative expression." Tolkien certainly valued this as well. In the second edition of The Silmarillion (which my wife got me for my birthday!), Tolkien's book published after his death that provides some of the "vast backcloth" (in his words) to his story in The Lord of the Rings, there is included an excerpt from a letter written by Tolkien to a friend in 1951. This was a few years before LOTR was published, and the letter contains some good explanations about the themes that drove his work. Tolkien disliked allegory; he preferred "history, true or feigned." I think this is cool because it kind of just lets one's art be what it is, with the option of "applicability" (as Tolkien called it) however the reader chooses to interpret it.Anyway, he said in his letter that one of the themes his "stuff" (writing) is concerned with is "Mortality." He says "[It is concerned] With Mortality, especially as it affects art and the creative (or as I should say, sub-creative) desire which seems to have no biological function, and to be apart from the satisfactions of plain ordinary biological life, with which, in our world, it is indeed usually at strife. This desire is at once wedded to a passionate love of the real primary world, and hence filled with the sense of mortality, and yet unsatisfied by it. (The Silmarillion, 2nd ed., p. xvii)"I'm going to close this post now because it's getting quite long, but I just want to end with asking you to ponder how interesting it is that this desire we have to create (or truly "sub-create" as Tolkien says, which acknowledges the fact that everything we see has been created by Someone else) gives us pleasure that cannot be credited to any biological function, and that helps show us the beauty of the world around us, and that yet leaves us wanting to find deeper satisfaction in something other than this mortal place.(In Tolkien's stories of Middle-earth, the mortality of Men was said to be the "Gift of Men," given by the Creator so that men would not be confined forever to the "circles of this world," as the Elves were. It was called by the Men who possessed it, however, the "Doom of Men." How often do we live only for the circles of this world, calling death our doom, when all the while we've been given life that goes beyond the here and now?)
