A couple of weeks ago a guest teacher at our church preached from Acts 10. It's one of those watershed stories of the early church: Cornelius is a God-fearing Gentile who is very devout and gives to the poor. An angel appears to him, affirms him for his good actions, and tells him to send for Peter, the head apostle who also happens to be Jewish and very committed to the gospel going to the Jews.
Peter comes, Cornelius and his whole house is converted, and Peter is converted to the work of the gospel among the Gentiles. Fast forward a couple thousand years and you've got me, a Dutch-Scottish Gentile worshiping Yahweh.
One of the teaching points at church that morning was this: good people need Jesus. Cornelius was about as good as they get. And yet the Peter is not sent there to affirm Cornelius' goodness. Peter is sent there to tell him about Jesus, the good news about his life and death and resurrection and the forgiveness of sins in his name. Good people need Jesus.
There was a huge celebration of Eve Carson's life today on campus. Thousands of people came to hear stories about her. And the stories were inspirational. By all accounts she was a tremendous and fantastic leader, person, student body president. You either felt inspired by her seemingly boundless energy and love for people or ashamed for being such a complete slacker and waste of a human being by comparison.
And as I heard the stories, it began to make more and more sense why we sang the alma matter and "Carolina in my Mind" at her services. UNC was her life. She poured herself into the work of making the University a better place for everyone. To make Carolina a better place was her life's work, it was her passion, the thing that she oriented her life around.
So here we are. A tremendous and gifted and wonderful woman who crammed more into 22-ish sleepless years of life than people twice her age...and yet it still all feels so empty. And I'm coming away from this experience more convinced than ever that work, even good work, even good works, even great relationships, even great family...none of those stories is big enough to give our stories the profound meaning that we long for, that we were created for.
Eve was a Cornelius. She was a good person, a great person. She needed a Peter. I have hope that there were inklings of the gospel at work in her life. I'm more committed than ever to developing and raising up leaders, Peters, who will be humble, bold, loving, committed, gracious, passionate, patient, gentle, in the speaking of the gospel...even and especially to the people who don't seem to need it.
1 comment:
Great post, Alex. Seriously, as someone who knew Eve, I think this is one of the most thoughtful things I've read about her life.
As the disgruntled alum, I just want to throw in an encouragement to make sure the leaders you raise up don't feel like Corneliuses as well... make sure they have their Peters too. It's easy for "the Carolina spirit" of student leadership to transfer into Christian organizations as well. Student leadership can milk a college student dry.
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