There’s Jesus.
That’s the nickname I gave Matthew Henry to make fun of him. He’d been a friend of mine since elementary school. I recognized him at once, but I avoided him. In his thick black rims and oversize denim pants, Matthew was the prototypical nerd. A part of me knew he wasn’t one of the cool kids, but there was another part of me that liked him, that secretly looked up to him. Matthew was part of a group of four guys I had grown up with earlier at the Academy. They were unusually mature for being high schoolers, and Pastor Bunt had begun paying extra attention to them for this reason. They were on the unspoken leadership track.
Back in fourth grade, Matthew and I played together and even stayed at each other’s house. His room, dark with the curtains drawn, was like a wizard’s den. It was filled with books, lights, and little inventions he was working on. His room was Godric’s Hollow in the West Country (home of the Dumbledores and the Potters). Both his parents were smart and loved education. His mom, Mrs. Marilyn Henry, was an anomaly as she rose to leadership at the City Academy and was a principal there for many years. The tall and full-figured woman with brown curly hair and a huge smile was somehow able to endure years of misogynistic attitudes and oppressive hierarchical systems. Many in the church thought a woman shouldn’t be a principal or a pastor.
Over the years, I had grown to have a hidden respect for Matthew. He didn’t care what others thought of him; he never hesitated in speaking his mind or standing up for what was right. He was like his mom. Despite others’ opinions, they kept plugging away doing what they thought was right.
When I was younger, I had a quick, sarcastic tongue, so there were many times I’d be ignorantly laughing with others, yet Matthew wouldn’t laugh, especially if it had to do with God. He’d become serious, even upset at our frivolity. He’d perk up with righteous indignation. “This isn’t right,” he’d say, and walk out of the room either angry or frustrated with our coarse jesting. I secretly liked that about Matthew. He was a teenager of conviction and willing to go against the crowd. He cared only about pleasing One. I liked how he owned who he was however odd it may have seemed to others. He had more purpose and conviction than anybody I knew. I didn’t meet too many high school kids with conviction like that who were willing to take ridicule for what they believed. To disregard what others thought about him was unusual among the people I knew, young or old. It was as if he had this unoffendable heart.
I also liked how Matthew prayed. His prayers had serious conviction; he emotionally engaged God like He was real. Again, this was something I hadn’t seen in too many high school students. I was astonished by his hunger to learn new things. He learned how to master puppets to entertain children. He tried to sing. He even learned how to play the accordion. He had a willingness to do whatever it took to connect people with his faith and God.
Pastor Bunt, of course, loved Matthew because of his willingness to serve and his ability to play music. He would lead others in songs. He was maximizing every gift he had. He was all in. I saw how it was the mature kids who were attracted to Matthew. They looked past the normal teenage awkwardness and unattractive physical habits he had and saw his heart. I guess I did, too, but of course I didn’t say it to him or to anyone else.
Our camp was divided into multiple teams. You got points for being kind, listening to the messages attentively, performing skits, and winning the games they would plan for us. I enjoyed having fun excursions with my friends, but I really loved the camp-wide rugged challenges. Local athletes attending camp were able to showcase their talents and impress their peers, and since I was now a public school football player, I was determined to win. The grueling summer practices had prepared me for these types of games.
One day the camp director of the games announced a new competition.
“The first ones to get to the top of the falls will acquire points for your respective teams.”
Everybody felt inspired to race up the mountain, where Bridal Veil Falls soared nearby. The 365-foot waterfall spilled out of the edge of a box canyon high above us. To get up the falls, you had to hike over huge granite and volcanic rocks and boulders scattered throughout the forests filled with Engelmann spruce, Colorado blues, subalpine fir, quaking aspen, cottonwood, and ponderosa pine. Motivated by an opportunity to prove myself to others and to demonstrate my athletic prowess, I put my resolute game face on and I started running up toward the falls.
Initially I was ahead of the pack. By the time I reached the top of Bridal Veil Falls, I could hear the roar of the water falling thirty-three stories down, crashing onto the rock formations, and cascading to a pool and more boulders below. A light mist of water hovered around the falls. As I sucked in air, I looked ahead to see who else might have survived this arduous climb. There was one camper slightly in front of me who was about to win. The only way I could beat this kid would be to jump over the small stream that led to the waterfall only twenty yards away.
You got this, Gibbons. Go for it.
When you’re sixteen, you think you can do anything. I took a deep breath, then began running toward the stream. As I launched myself into the air, my jump looked perfectly distanced, but as I hit the other side, my rubber tennis shoes slipped out from under me. I didn’t account for how slippery the rocks were. My body slammed down on the rock and soon I found myself chest deep into the stream. I looked down and saw the edge of the waterfall so close, with the current pulling on me fast. I tried pulling myself up but I couldn’t move. My legs locked up and my upper body was exhausted from the climb. I tried moving, but I had no energy. I tried again.
I had nothing left.
The Rocky Mountain air was thin; the elevation was over 10,000 feet, so my lungs gasped for oxygen. I knew I was done unless someone helped me. I didn’t know how long I could hold on to the rock. All I could envision was my body drifting and then tumbling over the waterfall onto the hard rocks below.
“Help! Help!”
My voice seemed swallowed by the thunderous sound of the falls. Fortunately, the camper I had overtaken was nearby. He quickly pulled me out.
“Thanks, man,” I said. As I stood up, clothes and shoes dripping with water, I tried to act nonchalant. “Man, that was a close call.”
The other camper didn’t know what to say. He seemed to be in shock, having watched me almost go over the cliff. He gave me a halfhearted smile and said, “Yeah, sure.” We were both thinking the same thing.
I could have died.
For a few moments, I caught my breath as more kids arrived at the top. My pants and part of my shirt were drenched with water. Soon I saw Pastor Bunt as I was coming down off the mountain. He caught up to me and started walking next to me.
“Heard what happened to you, Dave. You okay?”
I wondered how he had found out so quickly. I gathered my composure and told him I was fine. He leaned in and looked at me with his big, dark eyes.
“Do you think God is trying to tell you something?”
I laughed. “Nah, I don’t think so. See you.”
With half my body still dripping with water from being in the stream, I began heading back down the mountain. I didn’t want anybody thinking I was scared. And I didn’t want him to believe that I was thinking about God.
By this time in my life, I had developed an externally tough skin. After being called all kinds of names—a Chinaman, Chink, Kink, Slant Eyes—I had resolved not to let others see how their words affected me. I had chosen to stop physically fighting others but instead to demonstrate excellence by my actions. I had adopted a more relentless attitude. I knew I might not be the most talented person out there, but I had a quiet resolve that would never quit. If I showed up, I’d be all in. That inner fortitude came from my mom. She could handle abuse, poverty, war, ridicule, shame, death, and then immigrating to a new land, learning the language, and raising a family. I asked myself, What challenge do I have that is as tough as hers?
However, I did have another type of resolve.
God didn’t make sense to me anymore.
I blamed God for my parents’ divorce. He couldn’t be real if He allowed such painful tragedies to occur. Didn’t God know how much my mom had already suffered in life? Why wouldn’t He prevent something that would wreck a family?
I would later hear that God gives us the freedom to make choices. This freedom is gifted to us because He loves us, but the choices we make are ours. I might have wanted to blame God for what my dad did, but God didn’t force my dad to do anything. When Pastor Bunt asked me whether God was trying to tell me something, I was internally thinking maybe. I wasn’t ready to confront a relationship with God. To me, He still could have prevented the pain my family suffered.
I now know, even in my limited understanding, that God can speak to people in many ways. While we often look for God through some spectacular event, God has also spoken to people tenderly. This gentle aspect of God became more attractive to me.
“What is your purpose?”
The question from the well-groomed gray-haired man at basecamp in Colorado came near the end of his message about Daniel. That night’s special speaker at camp was Bud Bierman, a professor at Bob Jones University in South Carolina, who was respected by many of the kids in our church. He described Daniel being thrown into the lions’ den for refusing to worship other gods and God saving his life. Eventually Daniel went on to become a wise government official in Babylon, rising to become a trusted leader even though he was an outsider as a Jew.
Bud wasn’t overly charismatic delivering the message, and he wasn’t dramatically different than any of the other preachers I had heard in my life. His tone was gentle. Modulation even. He didn’t seem like the normal evangelist type. I don’t remember anything he said about Daniel except for one line:
“Daniel had a purpose in life.”
As I was sitting in the back row, goofing off with my friends, inwardly that phrase kept echoing in my mind. Daniel had a purpose. I wondered what was happening to me. I started feeling like I was the only person in the room.
