religion

There’s been a change of plans. Today there will be no more jokes and no more sarcasm. There’s just life, real life. With life, however, comes death.

You see, I just received news Tuesday one of my best friends from high school passed away in an accident. He was hiking in Switzerland with two of his friends when they decided to take a tram back down the mountain. Being the adventurer that he was, David wanted to hike the rest of the way and meet the group at the bottom. However, he never made it. Search and rescue parties scoured the terrain for two days looking for him, and on Tuesday, he was found. It is believed David fell and hit his head, and he passed away soon after.

When I heard David was missing, it didn’t seem real. I did not know exactly what to think or feel, so I just prayed instead. I prayed for guidance for the search team. I prayed for peace for his family. I prayed for protection over David and that the Lord would rescue him. Yet, in the midst of such a prayer, the Lord stopped me. “I have already rescued David. Though he may be missing now, I have found him. He never leaves my sight. Though it may seem hopeless now, he has already received from me a hope of heaven beyond compare. He is mine. He is my son. I have rescued him out of the pits of hell, and I have called him out of darkness into a glorious light both now and forever more.”

I didn’t learn to be religious while I was studying abroad. In fact, I went to a small Christian school from Kindergarten to Senior year, and it was painfully hard to keep my relationship with the Lord fruitful in a heavily Catholic and foreign society. However, I did learn about life. I learned about people, and I realized there is one universal quality across the globe. We are all looking for something. Everyone, whether Catholic or Islamic or French or Peruvian, we are all searching for something bigger and better to finally satisfy. Call it any type of religion you would like, but we are all worshipping something, and whether we like it or not, we dedicate our lives to the pursuit of that one thing we think will ultimately fulfill us. 

I made some truly unbelievable memories while I was abroad. I swam in the Mediterranean Sea. I rode ATV’s across a Grecian island. I jumped 300 feet into a canyon in Switzerland. That’s why we study abroad isn’t it? We go to see the world, to face those adventures and to feel those highs. However, if in the end all I am and all I become is dust, then what is the point? The answer is there isn’t a point to any of it without my religion. If my best, happiest and most memorable moment abroad is the happiest I’ll ever be, then that is a truly sad fate.

I was searching for adventure, and I got it. Reality says, however, we always have to come back down from the mountain. 

When I got home after receiving the news of David’s passing, I immediately opened my Bible, and it fell to Acts 13: 32-33. “We tell you the good news: What God promised our fathers, he has fulfilled for us, their children, by raising up Jesus. And it is written in the second Psalm, ‘You are my son; today I have become your Father.’” 

You see, there is good news. We have a promise, a promise that has already been fulfilled. Though it is a promise fulfilled through a death, it leads to eternal life through faith in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. David knew, accepted, and joyfully lived in the revelation of this truth. His religion wasn’t about good things happening to good people, bad things happening to bad or vice versa. It was about God coming down in all of the chaos and confusion, all of the loneliness, all of the travels, all of the trips and falls and everything in between and standing beside us. It was about knowing that no matter what happens, good or bad, we need not be afraid, for the Lord our God is watching over us in the peaks and in the valleys. He has saved us through the life and death of his son, and he guides us by his spirit through this earth and into his loving arms in eternity.

What are we left with when the adventure ends? The answer without God is nothing, but with God we have everything. David wasn’t searching for adventure, because he already found what we all search for in dedicating his life to and living for the completion of the kingdom of God. He found satisfaction, peace, contentment and joy. He knew the greatest adventure of all awaited him beyond this earth and this life. 

It is hard to grasp. It is a lesson we will be learning and growing in until we leave this earth, because the world tells us so differently. The world tells us over and over to be prepared, for with life comes death. However, I also know with David in death comes a new and eternal life.

Class isn’t dismissed. The course has just begun.