Thursday Again

It's been awhile since I posted weekly, since I had been posting daily.  But, to be certain, my lent posts were very different from my standard Thursday-or-so posts.

I had a great spring break.  I felt like I spent it everywhere I could in Ohio, and I don't think I could have made it any better without adding a day in Cleveland.  It's been far too long since I've been in Cleveland.  I think I'll organize a day in Cleveland sometime this summer.  West Side Market, maybe an Indians game, wander around downtown for awhile.  Could  be fun, very fun.

I also kind of broke my keyboard en route from my parents house back to Hillsdale... the spacebar only works about 60 percent of the time now.  I'll probably have to get a new keyboard, but I definitely prefer this one thanks to it's special controls.

I don't exactly know why I shared all of that, because my life simply isn't that dull.

In two days I'm going to Michigan State to engage in a day of evangelism training and evangelism on campus in the afternoon. I'm looking forward to that for everything it is, but, one step back, I'm looking forward to seeing students seriously  share their faith and engage in learning how to live a life of evangelism amongst their peers.

God is doing great things on campuses all around us.  Next week is the largest evangelistic project InterVarsity has ever undertaken, at Ohio State.  Already though, the chapters there have seen 100 people give their lives to Christ this school year.  We had around 30 people come to Christ when we did the same thing at Wooster.  Mathematically, that could mean 650 people come to Christ next week at Ohio State.  That sounds insane.  But God is huge and wants to see life transformation, he wants to see healing, he wants to love and for his children to know love.  Pray for even more, perhaps.

Spring Break was great, but it went a long way to accentuating the blankness of my life in Hillsdale.  There are many things I don't have here; non-work-related friends, a church that actually feels like home, true community.  But in the words of Paul, even having those, as I do at home, I count them all loss for the sake of the Gospel.  And that's why I'm here.  It's true, life, on its own, might be "objectively better" in Ohio.  Why wouldn't it be?  It's where I'm from, it's where "my people" are, so to speak.  But it's not where God has called me right now, and I know that...that was accentuated over break as well.  There are many holes to my life in Hillsdale, but there's a bigger, more important hole in my life everywhere else.  The ministry I'm doing here, the ministry to which I am completely committed is important, is huge, is well worth all sacrifice to the point that it's not sacrifice at all, but light and temporary inconvenience.  Because God loves Hillsdale, and he wants me here to learn and demonstrate that.

I don't know though, that I'll be at Hillsdale past next year.  I don't know that I'll even be on staff.  All I really know though, is that God wants me here now, and he wants me here one year from now.  Beyond that, I don't know anything, but I don't know that I have to.

"Give me one more year.  I will dig around it and cultivate the tree.  If then there is no fruit, you may cut it down and use it for firewood"  That's a quote from a parable somewhere in Luke as well as I remember it, and it's how I feel about Hillsdale right now, kind of.  It's not that I'm not seeing any fruit.  It's not that, even, I require any amount of fruit to stay here for longer than next year.  But I do require God letting me know it's right for me to be here past next year.  That's the sort of fruit I'll be looking for next year.  Right now, I feel like I'll be moving on, using my experiences here as the firewood to drive me wherever I'm headed next, after one more year.  I don't know how right it is to pull apart scripture like that, but scripture or not, it's a story I can apply like that in my life right now...even if not, as such, as the word of God.

I'm also feeling a push, from somewhere deep inside and all around, to stop neglecting the intellectual and artistic gifts God has given me.  I don't know what that means.  I don't know that they're completely wasted by being on staff (indeed, I don't think they are).  But I do know I'm going to spend a lot more time writing this summer.  Over the next year, while I'm praying, thinking, journaling, pursuing the next step for me, grad school won't be completely out of play, and that's kind of scary to say, because I've always said seminary is my next academic step if there is one.  But I don't think that's true anymore.  Actually, I don't think it's ever been true.  You could say I've been coming to terms with the potential intermingling of faith and art a lot lately.    I've never not believed it, but I never thought it true for me; I always separated out my academic life from my faith to a degree...it was just necessary when I had to make honest decisions about time in college and ministry found itself opposed to academics.  But when I think about the story of that, the changing of my major and the all-nighters during "It Could Be U" because I literally had no time to do homework before midnight that week, I realize that God has always blessed me with a special relationship to literature, which let me get through college with more an InterVarsity major than an English when you count the time I actually spent.  But that blessing, I don't believe, stopped then, and I don't believe it was just so I could get through college as such.  I know this because I read 7-10 books at a time because I deeply miss the intellectual stimulation I had during college.  I know this because I cannot express myself but through writing.  I know this because even still, little gets me more excited than talking about post-modernity.  It's just a part of who I am, and I confess that I thought I would grow out of it, I thought it would fade as I got farther from college.  But it hasn't.  And it won't.  Despite all I am, I am "a person of letters" so to speak, perhaps even more than anything else save for a child of God, saved by grace and called to love.

So I don't know what all of that means right now.  But it could someday mean my life looks much different from how I imagine it now, how I have imagined it for so long.

As of yesterday, I haven't seen Meg for an entire year.  I don't know that that matters to any of you, but I remember days when I would count the days since I've seen her and if that number was bigger than 0, it made me sorrowful.  I would count the days til I saw her again, and no matter how many there were, I would say "only" and be hopeful.  But yesterday passed with no pomp, no reflection.  It's just been a year, and it probably should have been a year a lot longer ago, save for good friends made at the Urban Plunge inviting us to an event at Marietta, with me accepting despite knowing Meg would be there.  Actually, since breaking up, Meg has performed a dance every time I've seen her...at Fall Conference and then at the hunger meal in Marietta. I couldn't watch either time.

It doesn't really matter how right it was that a once strong couple ends their romantic relationship....there are just some things it's hard to see someone you once loved do, times when they're at their most beautiful, times you remember why your relationship ever began in the first place...times when they seem closer to God than you could ever hope to be.  Audrey sings, Meg dances.

It has been a long year. Sometimes wonderful, sometimes terrible, but in the end, marked by love.

If you read this before tonight, pray for an important leadership meeting taking place at 6:30.

Pray for the price of life at Ohio State too.

-Zack

"There's a whistle in your will"
-Jason Morant