Let­ter From the Ed­i­tor

Greet­ings friends, 

As I write this let­ter on the evening of Feb. 13, 2023, some of our peers in the world of acad­e­mia are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing po­lar op­po­site phe­nom­ena. On the one hand, As­bury Uni­ver­sity, 337 miles south, is re­joic­ing in a great re­vival sweep­ing its cam­pus. On the other hand, there is a mass shoot­ing tak­ing place 155 miles north, at Michi­gan State Uni­ver­sity. 

Re­vival and mur­der. 

Life and death. 

I don’t know if any­thing else can so per­fectly cap­ture the ex­tremes of this cor­rupted world we live in, of this world where the only op­tion for eter­nal hope is through Christ. Some­times, it feels al­most im­pos­si­ble to main­tain faith in that hope, es­pe­cially in the midst of pain and tragedy. It feels im­pos­si­ble to keep “eter­ni­ty’s val­ues in view,” as an old hymn says, when “eter­nity” seems like a far-off con­cept that pro­vides lit­tle com­fort in pre­sent re­al­ity. It is one thing to dis­cuss the con­cept of “eter­nity” in church and to log­i­cally ac­knowl­edge its ex­is­tence and an­other thing en­tirely to ex­pe­ri­ence life through that per­spec­tive. 

Per­haps one area where re­vival and tragedy over­lap is in their em­pha­sis on the brevity of life. It is likely eas­ier to grasp, in some small way, how short our time on Earth is when we are ac­tively en­gaged in spir­i­tual re­newal. This same con­cept is shoved down our throats when a life is ended sooner than it should have been. 

It is al­most cer­tain that you or some­one you know has lost a loved one to some­thing that “should­n’t” have hap­pened; whether it be a fa­tal dis­ease or an act of vi­o­lence, the harsh truth is that we are sur­rounded by death. Even on a global scale, death has been in the spot­light the past few weeks. From mil­i­tary at­tacks in Ukraine to the earth­quake in Turkey and Syria, life is be­ing ex­tin­guished at an alarm­ing rate. 

Is there a place for hope, even amid so much grief and suf­fer­ing? 

Is there a place for grief and suf­fer­ing, even amid the hope and joy of re­vival? 

The an­swer to both of these ques­tions may be an ob­vi­ous “yes” on the sur­face, but the prac­ti­cal ex­e­cu­tion of such sen­ti­ments is more dif­fi­cult. Find­ing bal­ance in life is a bat­tle all its own, one that can drive us crazy if we let it. Strange as it sounds, peo­ple don’t al­ways want to leave room for hope when they’re ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the pain of loss; anger can be much more sat­is­fy­ing in the mo­ment. Con­versely, it may be awk­ward or feel in­va­sive to al­low space for pain when the “fires of re­vival” are burn­ing all around you. 

So, what’s the an­swer? How do we find bal­ance? Where is the steady foot­ing in the mid­dle of the storm? 

I don’t know. 

And that’s okay. 

Al­though some things will for­ever be cer­tain, al­though Christ is a firm foun­da­tion and longs to be our “shel­ter in the time of storm” (to quote an­other old hymn), the cer­tain­ties are over­whelm­ingly out­weighed by the un­cer­tain­ties from my faulty mor­tal per­spec­tive. Maybe some of you feel more grounded and as­sured about dif­fi­cult things, and that’s okay too. 

But I want to en­cour­age each and every one of us (my­self in­cluded) to re­mem­ber that it is­n’t sin­ful to doubt or stu­pid to feel weak. Re­mem­ber the words Christ spoke to Paul: “My grace is suf­fi­cient for thee: for my strength is made per­fect in weak­ness” (2 Cor. 12:9). Will this be hard to be­lieve some­times? Ab­solutely. It can be healthy to read through the curs­ing psalms of David or to be re­minded of the hope­less­ness por­trayed in Psalm 88. God wants us to ex­press all our emo­tions to Him. He pro­vides us with cer­tainty while giv­ing us space for ex­tremes. 

And that, my friends, is a beau­ti­ful thing. 

“To God be the glory, great things He hath done.” 

Thought­fully, 

Bri­anna Rae Dens­more