Faith and Service

My junior year of college is over. I made the drive home from Georgia yesterday and arrived at the house that I grew up in around 8:15pm, after leaving at 4:00am. The lengthy drive allowed for some good time to reflect and anticipate the coming summer. Today, as I walked through the forest behind my house, the forest where I played as a child, I pondered my upbringing. Walking those familiar paths, smelling those familiar smells, has a way of making a person reflect.

I was raised, and was privileged to be raised, by Christian parents in a loving, safe environment. Faith came easy to me. I had a loving church gamily, positive Christian role models and a knack for learning. In our blessed American home, freedom of religion and economic affluence (at least compared to the rest of the world) seemed to come hand in hand. All in all, my faith cost me nothing, and I saw no problems with this fact. My limited experiences with service—a pair of short-term, two-week trips to Central America—were positive, and perhaps formative experiences, but they did little in effecting life change in me or those of whom I was allegedly serving.

It wasn’t really until last summer at the age of 20, that I realized the cost of Christian discipleship. In Aliquippa I found myself needed, challenged and overwhelmingly in-over-my-head. Here there were children deprived of safety, education and ultimately childhood itself. Here were people without hope, economic stability, or a future. Here, for the first time in my life, I was confronted with the holistic and tragic effects of sin on human life. It was from this I was spared and saved as a child, and by the grace of God alone.

In addition to this realization, I found that as I stepped out in the faith and Christian service that Christ calls us to, something profound began to happen inside of me. The faith that I’d claimed as a child became real to me, as it manifested itself in action and service. I’d believed what the Bible taught, for sure, but it meant nothing to me until it was acted on. Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously said, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” I’d believed in the call, but it was not until Aliquippa that I began to die.