You Can’t Cram For This Final
This was published in the fall of 1998 in the Yale Standard.
A year ago, almost to the day I write this, a Princess died. It was freshman bazaar day here at Yale, and I remember the looks of disbelief as the news passed along the line of tables on Old Campus. Maybe there was disbelief because Diana was glamorous and wealthy and still in her prime. Or maybe it was that things had changed so suddenly for her. One moment she was a magnet for the media, a person millions admired, and the next she was dead—as if none of what had gone before mattered.
The Bible talks about human life this way: “All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers and the flowers fall….” (Isaiah 40) No matter how long we live, we are temporary, and death comes unwished for, often sooner than it’s expected.
“All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers and the flowers fall….” (Isaiah 40)
A couple of weeks ago, a Yale friend of mine, class of ‘98, accidentally took a dive down a waterfall in North Carolina, and landed on her head on some rocks below. Miraculously, she lived through it, and the doctors say she’ll recover completely. But an experience like that gives a person a new grip on the basics. She said it made her realize that if she had chosen to wait until the moment of crisis to ask herself if her connection to God was real, the answer to that question would probably have been “no.” You can’t cram for that kind of final. You can’t afford waiting until a crisis comes to make friends with God, because it may be your last.
Christ died to reconcile you to God, but are you still going your own way? God makes this offer: “Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.” (Isaiah 1) That cleansing is the beginning of a life free from the fear of death, because the life Jesus gives is eternal. “The world passes away, and the lust of it; but he that does the will of God abides forever.” (1 John 2, KJV)
Don’t wait. Begin at Yale with a new life in Christ.
Marena Fisher, Graduate ’92