Nonsensical Edification

                 My hair was beyond disheveled from my hands consistently running through it as I tore cross campus in a race against time, and pitched in battle with myself. Still breathing hard as I reached my office, I crumpled to the ground allowing my body to become deadweight as I simply gave up.  The time stained rough carpet that has been in my office long before it become “mine” pressed firmly into my fore head. I looked pathetic, but I didn’t care in the slightest. I was beyond caring. A kind of guttural groan escaped from my throat as I knew I should have been starting a prayer. But to say what?! Part of me wanted to weep, and part of me could feel the foolishness of my desperation. Dying to oneself is a hard pill to swallow.

                I could paint the portrait of unfortunate events, wrong thought patterns, wrong attitudes, and deferred hopes that brought me to my knees that night, but they are not the point. They rarely are. What mattered was I had reached the nadir of my current valley. It was not a particularly deep valley or drastic situation, simply more than I could handle on my own, and I had been trying too long. The beautiful thing about valleys is that in their very nature as we pass through them, they are passed. After the lowest points things always rise. Out of my mouth escaped a simple prayer: “In my distress I cried unto the LORD, and he heard me.” (Psalm120:1) The Lord always hears and takes interest in me, but on occasions he has opened my eyes to see his unlikely angels of encouragement as what they are, his instruments in my life, blessings. This night was such a night.
                As I finished my prayer, I rose slowly to my feet. I felt the kind of emotional numbness that often follows such purging times. I was tired, but I now knew I could go forward to the tasks at hand, the Lord with me rather than opposing me. I sat down at my desk. My desk was mildly cluttered as the desk of a first year employee filling a role too large for the sum of his years should be. I have been told I am mature for my age not that I’ve matured; I feel my desk reflects that. I pulled my English text book out of my black backpack and placed it on my desk. English Comp 1 was at that moment what my hands found to do and so I did my best to do it hardily.
                About an hour and a half into the effort three of the students I am discipling popped their heads into my office to check on my emotional state, knowing I was trying to plow through my school work, catching up from starting behind. The largest of the three, a young man named Brice who will probably singlehandedly change the world in the course of his lifetime, walked over to where I was folded into the couch where I had migrated with my laptop. He, without a word, bent over and proceeded to pick me up trying to carry me out the door. Now, Brice is a good ol’ boy. He had plenty of physical strength from growing up on a farm. At the same time I myself am no small fellow and an awkward struggle ensued that I’m sure would have been quite humorous to passer-byers, that is, should my office have been the type of office that could have passer-byers. However within my small windowless office no one outside the unfortunately pink tinted walls could see as the three of them tried to persuade me to abandon my work for just a moment to run to the Duncan Donuts on 19 just a few minutes from campus. Brice is a salesman if I ever saw one, and when he believes in something he will back it with all his heart. He’d already rallied the allegiance of many churches and schools to support Care4Aids, a missions organization Brice believes quite strongly in. This night Brice believed quite strongly that I needed to take a break. It took all my powers of persuasion to finally convince them that I wouldn’t be able to leave and that it was for the best of everyone if I stayed. They filed out and I got back to focusing on what I had to be doing.
                I knew I needed to plow forward in my work. I knew I had to be disciplined. I knew I had to ignore my emotional state. I knew there was work to be done.

               Another 20 minutes passed as I trudged through the mountains of sentences to diagram and authors to analyze that lay ahead of me. Then without any warning, or precautionary knock of any type my door flew open once again. In walked the three amigos with four cups of Duncan Donuts coffee. A defeated smile crept across my face, and I welcomed them in. Alex plopped down on the old green couch that had been dragged in for times such as these, Jarren took my co-worker Eric’s swiveling desk chair, and Brice assumed command of my desk placing his size 12 work boot on the couch. I looked up from the ground where I had landed sprawled out with my laptop and book work. The conversation that followed was not particularly profound, and our topics were not world shaking. We unanimously decided that Brice had no childhood because he did not know of power rangers. Then Jarren wielding an expo marker and an imagination turned on Eric’s to do list. After the group decided that Eric planned to clone himself, buy two donuts, find a wife, and move to Yemen, the conversation turned to the center of the room as the topics bounced off the walls in such a way that surely can only be produced by young 20 somethings that have plenty of potential, big hopes, and probably still too much youthfulness in them for their own good.

                As I looked at the three of them God began to open up my eyes and I began to marvel. Jarren has the heart of a pastor and much of his father’s wisdom. Alex under his mess of un-kept hair and glasses has an incredible mind and a beaming spirit. Brice as I already mentioned will probably either save the world or conquer it by the age of 30. I smiled just simply enjoying the simplicity of fellowship. We are still far from perfectly lovely or worth dying for, but it was for us unimpressive, imperfect, inconsistent, immature persons that Christ died. We were completely and totally accepted in the beloved just as we were. At our weakest moments, He still rejoices over us with singing. When we are fickle and human, His thoughts toward us are still innumerable. That is reality. I can’t explain how, but God used that time to bring me into appreciation of this truth. To me it was nonsensical, because it was not penciled into my to-do list, but the Lord knew it was exactly what I needed. It was not in a sermon, not in exhortation that brought me to this truth. Yes, both certainly have their time and place, but perhaps also there is a time and place for nonsensical edification.