My Bush-Bush

When I decided to major in physics, everyone thought I was crazy. Including myself.

No one saw that one coming. Neither did I.

It didn't make sense to anyone. It didn't make sense to me.

I felt like God told me to go, so I went. I didn't go to be a missionary. I didn't go because I felt called to "preach the gospel to all." I didn't go because I had this "burden" for the campus. I didn't go because I liked physics, or was good at physics, or felt like I had some future in physics.

Damn it, Jim, I'm a writer, not a physicist!

I didn't go for any sane reason. And when I say that God told me to go, that's the sum of what I mean. I felt like He said, "Go. There." So I went. There. I had no "calling" past that. I know now that I went to be a missionary, but I didn't depart that way. Not like my friends, who feel called the share the gospel with nations and so embark on journeys.

I embarked on a journey first.

I didn't encounter cannibals or language barriers or poisonous snakes or cold showers or blistered feet.

I just ran into really hard math. Math that made me cry.

No sleep, hard math, and a drastic separation from my family that I'd never experienced before.

At the time, I did a lot of sobbing and exclamations of, "Why are You doing this to me?! This sucks!"

The only thing I had to go on was something I'd learned years before in a different trial. That God is good. He always comes through. He won't leave us abandoned. He'd proved it to me before.

And so I held on and did what I knew I'd been called to do.

It was a year later that I realized I was actually a missionary at university. That campus was my bush-bush, so to speak. It's true; I'd always felt called to evangelize to America more than other countries. Hurting people are hurting people, is what I always thought and what I think God put on my heart.

"The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty -- it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There's a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God." - Mother Theresa

At university, God began to open my eyes to an entire people group that has been quietly shamed and shunned by some of the Christian community: academia. I didn't realize this until a time when I arrived back home for a weekend and a Christian friend mentioned something about all the "liberals" at my school and how I was to evangelize to them. It wounded me greatly, and I realized why: it was because "those liberals" were my friends. They were people. I loved them. I didn't think of them as "liberals," or any other term; I thought of them as friends.

That was when I knew. The academic community--those "liberal," evolutionist academics--was as ostracized as the native "savages" were by Christians centuries ago.

"I felt like churches came to the table with a them and us mentality, them being the liberal non-Christians in the world, and us being Christians. I felt, once again, that there was this underlying hostility for homosexuals and Democrats and, well, hippie types. I cannot tell you how much I did not want liberal or gay people to be my enemies. I liked them. I cared about them, and they cared about me....I wanted to love everybody." - Donald Miller

For some reason, God chose to give me a heart for the people that rub a lot of Christians the wrong way. Call them what you want--the academics, the scientists, the evolutionists, the liberals, the gays, the atheists, the agnostics, the skeptics--they are humans. And what is beautiful is that God has given me eyes to see that, when I used to sit back and think of them as...them.

I am humbled every day that God lets me do this. And I mean it that way--He lets me. He didn't have to call me here. He loved the people of academia long before I did; He knew who would be here now. He could have chosen anyone to be His ambassador. There are certainly plenty of people better suited to physics than myself.

Physics. He saw a people group that He wanted to meet, and so He sent me. Me, who had never taken a physics class before. Me, who had gone three years without calculus. Me, a writer. Me, whose classroom experience was limited to a half-load of community college. Me, who would be living with my grandmother.

He saw people that He wanted to meet, and so He sent me. It's beyond words. It has brought me to my knees on several occasions. I get to be an ambassador. It's not on my own merit. I've done nothing. I can see how things in my life have made me perfect for this task, but...those things were His doing. I get to be an ambassador. All I did--all I did--was say yes.