Several years ago, an overarching sentiment I felt can be captured in the words of “How can you?” It is an episode of my life I am very ashamed about and not anything I ever want to relive again. In the summer of 2003, I was burnt out with law school and with life in general because I experienced failure on a worldly and spiritual level. No matter how hard I studied, I had terrible grades. I had no spiritual passion or focus. I didn’t know what I wanted except that I wanted to get away from all of this and so, I decided to take a leave of absence from school and go off to Korea. And I did this without telling anyone- my family, this church, my friends- except at the very end when I told them that I was leaving. Going to Korea isn’t so much the problem as much as the sudden bomb shell dropping manner I let them know, through which people were devastated. I thought people would try to stop me but what I didn’t expect out of my cluelessness was that they would be deeply hurt. Seeing how much pain I caused everyone and feeling bad about this and over the fact that I wasn’t going to change my mind nevertheless, I left feeling awkward and like an even bigger failure. I hated myself and my sentiments towards myself were “How can you?”
I mention this anguishing moment of my life because it underscores how grateful I am for God rebuilding me this past year. This is not to say that God hadn’t started the rebuilding process before this past year. But as I look back on this past year, I see more of the visible fruits that I can point to as a testament to God’s grace and faithfulness. It has been over a little more than a year since I started doing SFSU college ministry and this happens to be the particular vehicle which God happened to use in rebuilding me and through which, stems the many other things that I am thankful for.
The fact that I am even in ministry and that God would want to still use someone like me has been grounds for tremendous adoration throughout the year. I think back to my disillusioned sophomore year when I was utterly depressed and didn’t see the point to anything I did nor would ever do. I think back to more recent years where all the failures I brought upon myself left me resigned to accepting that it meant the death of any spiritual excitement I once had, and that nothing much would come out of my life. Yet throughout this past year, my mind was filled with a lot of questions. As I was leading games for our TFNs and facing the audience of staff and students, I caught myself wondering how a guy like me could be allowed to lead games after all that I had done. As I was on campus flyering and tabling for the New Student Welcome Night and facing a large oncoming crowd, who was I that I should be the one inviting all of them? After all, I am only some screw-up who didn’t have his life together and you wouldn’t put your money on me to help a ministry advance. Yet still, I found myself on the SFSU campus explaining to a crack addict that God makes all things new and that only in him can we have a high like none other. I encountered an African American student and told her that God’s light shines brighter than anything else and no matter what darkness we have in ourselves nor encountered in our past, there is still hope because God’s light will still shine brighter. When a Chinese international student asked me why I asked to pray together before the meal, I motioned towards the sky saying that everything belongs to God and we thank him because of his goodness. Of all the people who could have represented God in those situations, why me? Though years ago my life was headed quickly towards a downward spiritual spiral, how did God bring order to the mess I created such that I am now arranging rides for students, in charge of the curtain setup for Sunday services, helping out with gym nights, directing the New Student Welcome Night skit, going to the DCs to be the first point of contact students would have to our group and probably to God altogether, leading freshman small group, counseling impressionable college students, being the house manager for the first pseudo Dana House of SFSU, and overall, being entrusted with the souls of other people? A lot of these are otherwise mundane and ordinary tasks. Nonetheless, they have been for me heavy with meaning as I felt myself unexpectedly moved to tears when by myself, because not too long ago, I didn’t see myself doing any of this. And I just felt so lucky because somehow, God immersed me with purpose and reawakened the once dormant spiritual zeal buried deep within me.