This is my final week in Trondheim
and in fact I am just 72 hours away from leaving for Mandal this Sunday night.
It has been an awesome time in Norway in general and in Trondheim specifically.
I have thoroughly enjoyed working especially among the high school students
here. You can imagine then the feeling of having to say goodbye to the precious
moments of sharing with the priceless high school students.
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| Archimedes' Eureka Moment |
Being my final week, I visited
one of the schools called Thomas Skolen for the last time. I had been requested
to share my walk in Christianity and I took a few minutes to share on how I had
become a Christian as a first year at the University after being an atheist and
agnostic for a while. After I had finished sharing, I invited questions from
the small group of students I was sharing with and the only question I was
asked has stayed with me to this moment: Why am I a Christian? I gave the quick
reply that my Christian faith makes the best sense of the world we live in and
that it is because of the love of God which He has personally and powerfully
poured in me through Jesus Christ.
The
answer was sufficiently what I had in mind but later I couldn't help but wonder if there is a better reason why I am Christian. The question has hung in my
heart ever since that day until tonight as I read John Stott's reply to a
similar question in his book Why I am a
Christian when I finally had my Eureka moment. The deep question I was asked found an even deeper
answer. I am a Christian because Christ had been pursuing me in love and found
me and I yielded to Him and I have found rest in Him. John Stott sums it best
when he puts it this way:
Why I am a Christian is due ultimately neither to the influence of my parents and teachers, nor to my own personal decision for Christ, but to ‘the Hound of Heaven’. That is, it is due to Jesus Christ himself, who pursued me relentlessly even when I was running away from him in order to go my own way. And if it were not for the gracious pursuit of the Hound of Heaven I would today be on the scrap-heap of wasted and discarded lives
It is such questions
like this that make me think deeply about what my beliefs are during my last 8
months in Norway. My faith and beliefs have been deeply challenged and deeper
convictions have formed as I have had the chance to explore the Christian faith
and its alternatives. If that was all I came to Norway to do, then I might as well have surpassed my targets by far.
