When I first decided to attend Calvin College and announced the decision to my friends and family a little over a year ago, a common question I received was, “Why a Christian campus?” I replied with something along the lines of wanting to grow my faith before entering the ‘real world’ and really craving the kind of Christian community a Christian college like Calvin provides.
Now, looking back as I prepare to close the chapter of my freshman year at Calvin, I can say that my two initial reasons for choosing a Christian college still hold true. I have grown exponentially in my faith and have established a very loving group of strong Christian friends.
But what’s surprised me about my time on a Christian campus is how easy it is to be drawn away from God rather than draw near to him. I remember hearing this from other students at Christian colleges and naïvely thinking the same wouldn’t happen to me.
But in the midst of the daily routine of chapel, Bible study, dorm worship, it became easy to be satisfied that my faith needs were being met. This kind of thinking is what took me to a place of distance from God that I never would have expected to see in myself in a place with the motto, “My heart I offer to you Lord, promptly and sincerely.”
But God is merciful, and even when I’m at my lowest he lifts me up. That’s the other great thing about a Christian campus, you often get to see and experience God moving first-hand.
When God moves, he moves big, unexpectedly, and powerfully. But more than that, when God moves, he moves well. This may seem like a strange or incomplete thought, but let me elaborate.
What does it mean when I say God moves well? It refers to the goodness and wholeness and pureness of an action. It refers to how God moves well towards us. He reveals his unfailing love and his endless mercy and his bottomless forgiveness. He does good towards us and for us and through us. Incomprehensibly so.
When people tell me they don’t “understand religion” or “can’t get God” I think no wonder! God is so much higher and greater than us, it’s only natural to get turned around every once and a while when trying to invest in a relationship with God. To begin to look around rather than up and at the creation rather than the creator.
But in my experience, when we doubt or get distracted or start running after idols, this is when God shows up and really truly moves in our lives.
Sometimes it takes a God-sized realization, a loving smack in the face to realize a deeper part of God’s character and see that he really is working. Yet even in the midst of a sudden God-given clarity, it’s all too easy to fall into a pit of guilt. Guilt is the natural progression from realization.
To know you’ve failed, you’ve let God down, but can you really let down the one who holds you up? No. And so appropriately, God takes care of the guilt too. God says, “I fight your battles for you.” He restores the bridges in my cracked relationships and broken life. He holds my heart so it can once again be filled. He melts my hard skin of apathy and renews my soul with joy.
It sometimes feels like a vicious cycle. Intense belief, deep doubt. Slack for one day and suddenly God doesn’t seem close, doesn’t seem active. But that perception is really made from eyes clouded by sin. Eyes that God clears with his love and cleanses with his blood. A spirit that God restores when he moves well.
