Week 7 Reflection

Hmm...I wasn't expecting this post to turn out like this, but it looks like it's gonna be another "God-post."

I'm over halfway through my first quarter here, and I'm really liking it. I'm taking classes I want to take, I've made some pretty good friends, I fit in with my lab group, I'm doing cool research looking at the mechanical properties of the knee mensicus, I did really well on my midterms, my advisor's cool, etc...

However, at least twice every week this thought comes to me: "What am I here for?" It's louder than my normal thoughts, so I'm pretty sure it's from the Lord. It's funny because so far the thought has come when I've had accomplishments (I'm going to be co-authoring a paper, for example), when I'm near that point of being stressed about a midterm, or even at random times like when I'm biking home from the gym. I'm still working hard in my classes and on my project because I have to take care of my responsibilities here, but it's kind of interesting to have this new perspective. I never had strong feelings like this when I was at Cal.

On a related note, I just got back yesterday from a retreat for the Christian Students club I joined on campus. The focus was on the heavenly vision the Apostle Paul saw in the book of Acts:

Acts 9:3-6 and as he went, he drew near to Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. And he fell on the ground and heard a voice saying to him, Saul Saul, why are you persecuting Me? And he said, Who are You, Lord? And He said, I am Jesus, whom you persecute. But rise up and enter into the city, and it will be told to you what you must do.

In just three verses Paul received a revelation of the Lord and His body that governed the rest of his life. That might need a little explanation: Paul (who was called Saul) was a persecutor of the followers of the Lord - he was present at Stephen's stoning - but when he was struck down by the light, the Lord first told him that He was Jesus, and that Paul was persecuting HIM. This shows that the believers are actually the Lord (but not in the Godhead), and that persecuting a believer is the same as persecuting the Lord. If someone keeps punching you on the arm, you'd typically say, "Stop hitting ME," right?

That wasn't even the point that impressed me the most. If you look at Acts 26:13-16, you can read Paul's recounting of the experience to King Agrippa. The way he tells it seems like it happened that day - the account is almost exactly the same as it was in Acts 9 - but the amount of time that passed between Acts 9 and 26 was 25 years. This vision really had an impact on him, and you can see its effect in the way he greets individual believers in his Epistles - he went from someone who killed believers to someone who greeted them by name and blessed them.

These messages brought me to realize that I want significant experiences of the Lord to be burned into me in this way. And I want to keep having new experiences. I know I won't be satisfied with life if I slip back to how I was only a short while ago. It's kind of scary, but it's also motivating me to keep going forward.

Looking back, I'm really glad I went through the things I went through during the last four years - things I haven't told a lot of people - and over this past summer summer. Some things were awful when they were happening (and some things still aren't resolved), but if I didn't go through them, I think I'd be living a meaningless life here at Stanford. I could totally picture a scenario where I got a M.S. degree, landed a good job, worked my butt off for 20 years, and realized at 50 that I wasn't happy. Thank you God.

This is getting a little heavier than I wanted it to be, so I'll stop here.

Random, and a little lighter: Check out this new blog my friends and I started!

bachelor-ette-food.blogspot.com

We'll be posting our recipes there because we're all at that stage where we're experimenting with cooking. Some of us are pretty darn good cooks, too. Stay tuned!