Over Fall Break nine junior students and I went to Tuscaloosa, Alabama to construct a roof with Habitat for Humanity for a an elderly woman whose house was damaged in the tornadoes last Spring. The woman, Mrs. Anne, had previously had a group come out to repair her roof, but the folks who fixed it before our team did had ripped her off, sloppily laying shingles, leaving decayed wood, and, in general, misproperly “fixing” the problem. This meant that before our team could build Mrs. Anne a functional roof we had to first strip the roof of its old shingles, felting, and nails. That was frustrating. It was also hard work, and I had to overcome my fear of heights, quickly deciding that I might as well drive back to Clemson if I wasn’t going to climb up the ladder. It was rewarding to see our progress day after day and to be able to leave after the fourth day knowing that we had completed the project. A woman who had no real roof, now had one. A once incomplete house, was now complete. Everyone who has helped reconstruct Tuscaloosa has advanced the city towards completion, but not every worker gets to see something completed, an obvious difference. Our team did. It was refreshing, and frankly, I needed to see something get finished. Ministry is never done. It is like kneading bread- there’s always an edge, a person, that’s moving towards the outer edge that needs to be folded back into the middle.
Our host church was Trinity Presbyterian. They provided meals for us, a place to sleep, showers, a leader from the church to show us how to build a roof and who also worked along side of us the entire time. Thanks to Dave I now know more than I ever wanted to know about roofs, and the next time I need a repair I’ll be sure to hire someone because roofing is miserable in a way, and I respect anyone who does it day in and day out. Trinity provided us with a home,–literally–a house on the church property with a kitchen and a living room for our team to eat and rest in. The Lucy family opened their home to our team, not once, but twice in the same day, asking our group to lunch after church and then hosting about 40 students in their home that night, as we joined Alabama’s RUF in their normal Sunday night fellowship at the Lucy’s. This family is once of the most genuinely hospitable families I know, and their welcoming spirits make me want to extend them same hand of fellowship to others.
When we returned to Clemson on Tuesday I was tired. A feeling that has not been foreign to me so far in this internship experience. The past few weeks of traveling, building, meeting with students, and- not to mention- the stress of my car breaking down and having to find alternative ways of traveling, left me worn out and a little cynical about my life. But of course, in God’s way of perfect timing, that’s when God provided relief and revitalization, which brings me to RUF training in Atlanta.
Never does being beaten down with my own sin feel so freeing as it does when I rest fully in the knowledge that I am one screwed up human being and that God loves me anyway and there is nothing I can do to change that. That’s always the theme at RUF training. Admittedly, this is now the main reason why I love RUF. We don’t talk about a strategy or a methodology of ministry. We talk about the Gospel because a deep understanding of the Gospel leeds to effective ministry.
The truth is that the exhaustion I have been experiencing is due to the amount of work/travel/meetings I have been doing, but more than that it is the result of my continual refusal to rest in the finished work of Christ for me and in his sovereignty over the lives of my students. I have been trying to justify myself and base my value as an intern on how much “progress” I am making, how many students I meet with, how full my schedule is, and how spiritual my conversations with students have been. Ministry is not the job to go into if you are looking for “progress” of a sense of achievement. If that’s what I was going to be waiting for each morning before I got out of bed then I’d still be in it. Keith Burger, an Area Coordinator for RUF, gave a talk at training on “Working and Resting,” and it was the maybe the best thing I have ever heard. It was one of those talks in which you literally feel a weight being lifted off you. The only word to describe it is “cathartic.” It was emotionally exhausting, and, as always, if one bears the exhaustion, seeking to understand the exhaustion, it was ultimately freeing. Keith’s basic premise was that “rest” is not merely a day off from work; it is trusting Jesus with the lives of your students and with you own life. It is being able, at the end of the day, to walk away from a student in crisis and leave them in the hands of Jesus because He is at work when you are not. I came into the internship with a whole armory of pride, misassumptions, false trust in Jesus, and a sense of “being enough.” I didn’t meet my own expectations, which is far worse than not meeting those of others. I am learning humility. And I am learning to trust Jesus, to trust that he is working and that his work is not dependent on mine.
April Goes to Clemson 