Recently I reunited with one of my best ever students who is now working on her Master’s degree. When I asked her how she was this very bright Christian young lady lit up and joy flowed from her as she related to me her story. When she was two-years-old her parents fled Columbian violence by working their way to the United States via various ways through Central America. They were never documented. She went to elementary and high school in California. She was my student at Atlantic Union College here in Massachusetts. Her joyful news is she can stay in America. She said, “Oh, Dr. Bothwell, I grew up here. I don’t know any other place. I was only two when my parents brought me here. This is my home. I am an American. I want to teach here. English is my mother tongue. I want to give. And now I can.” I wish you could have seen the tears as she was telling me, “This is my home.”
“Wow,” I thought. “What a waste of our precious resources if she had had to leave. She is a treasure.”
Knowing that Jesus understands our tremendous potential and knowing because of Ephesians 2 that God has a plan for us, He must weep when He sees us throwing it away. We have an eternal future with possibilities to match our potential that we cannot conceive. “And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.”? II Corinthians 9:8.
What joy to know that we are “home” in God’s love with an unbounded future. There is no fear of ever being sent away. He loves us.
Written by Roger Bothwell on September 14, 2012
Spring of Life Ministry, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574
Rogerbothwell.org