Last Day of School

Well, I finished teaching Friday - at least the in-classroom part. I could now commence musing about how it doesn't seem possible that the year has gone so fast (it doesn't), and how unprepared I am to transition back to the States so soon (I am), and how difficult it is to navigate the wistfulness that grabs and threatens to suck me downward when I come to the end of things (it is).

But this is always how things are - especially as a teacher. We live in an artifical world of repeated beginnings and endings, liftoffs and landings. And I really do prefer this to a job where time stretches out without any recognizable marking points. It's just that I so often find myself getting melancholy (thanks for that personality trait, Dad) and have to find new things to look forward to.

Thankfully, this week has also contained some blessings, some reminders of why I am here in the first place. This past Wednesday at chapel, a first-year student shared his testimony. I won't go into too many details other than to say that it is a powerful one - one in which it is SO evident that God has persued this kid, brought him to LCC and is continuing to grow and guide him. It is, and I'm not saying this lightly, a MIRACLE that this student was standing before a large number of his classmates, telling the story of his truely rough past life and how God has changed him. In short, God showed up in chapel in a big way, and there was much evidence of the Holy Spirit at work.

Toward the end of his talk the student took out a knife that he has carried around, and used, for years. To him, it symbolizes the last connection he has to his past life. In a very dramatic and heartfelt motion, he dropped it to the stage and walked off.

As he did that, all I could think was, "this kid just got baptized." In a multi-tradition setting, where baptism means different things not only to different Protestant believers, but also to Catholic and Orthodox, it can be tricky to think about how to recognize an individual's conversion. But, if baptism is a point at which a person acknowledges before the community his or her identification with other believers, the point at which he or she symbolically crosses from the old life into the new creation, then that is what all of us in chapel witnessed on Wednesday. And it was really beautiful.

Another beautiful moment of the week was at the school closing ceremony Friday afternoon. Each class of students selected one member of the class to speak briefly about the past year. One girl I spend a lot of time with spoke on behalf of the freshman. Even though she only had a few minutes, she talked about how LCC is like the ocean - meaning that, when you look at it, on one hand you see only the surface of things, but in reality there is a lot going on underneath. She spoke about how much she has changed this year, how much has happened in her life in 8 short months. It was amazing to watch her speaking in front the entire student body when I remember talking with her, just a soft-spoken girl who didn't make much eye contact, back on the opening day ceremony in August.

These are just two lives that have been impacted by the community at LCC over the past year, but it gives me a lot of joy to see evidence of God working, knowing that He is always drawing us toward Himself and toward each other.