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Steve Wall |
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| Holding on to epiphany |
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| By Steve Wall, Religion Columnist |
Friday, October 09, 2009 |
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For a young man to leave his Southern roots and drive deep into Yankee country was difficult. But as I turned to my mother to say goodbye, she said, "You are really going to go?"
All my earthly belongings were packed away in my car. I put the car in reverse and responded, "I'm outta here!"
Two days and 1,200 miles later, I arrived in South Lancaster, Mass., hopelessly lost. Roads there seemed to emanate from Boston on old cow paths. It was dark and the peepers were screaming from the trees. I called out the window, "Where is Mrs. Kilgore's house?"
A guy and a girl snickered at my Southern drawl and pointed across the campus of Atlantic Union College. I pulled up the driveway and rang the bell. An old lady was scurrying about the house. She came to the door with a beaming grin. "Welcome to AUC," she said. I settled into my room and fell asleep to the cadence of peepers.
I was a pre-med major, but I quickly discovered that my lazy schoolwork in math surfaced in genetics class.
I met with my genetics teacher. "I just don't have the math background to continue. I'll flunk," I said.
"What are you going to do?" he said. I cannot quite recall how my mind fell into the childhood channel of a call to pastoral ministry, but it fell out of my mouth.
He looked aghast. "I am not going to have another pre-med flunky drop and join the pastoral ministry course of study," he said. "Let's get on our knees right now and pray that God will help you change your mind." We did.
But I still dropped the class and headed to the theology building. Up three flights of stairs, in the attic, I knocked on the door of George Rice, the department head. By now I was growing a beard and feeling the pangs of rebellion returning. Dr. Rice invited me to sit and explain my visit. I told him I was switching my major from pre-med to theology.
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Dr. Rice thought I would wipe out, being two weeks behind in Greek class. He didn't know that I was a star student in Latin in high school. I just learned the alphabet and caught up on vocabulary, and soon, I was an A student.
Then there was homiletics, or preaching, class. Each student had to present a five-minute sermon on any topic. Mine was about signs of Christ's second coming. When I finished, the professor reflected for a few minutes.
He turned around in his chair and said, "Steve, what can I say? God has called you to preach!" I left the class that day and retreated to a wooded area sensing in the comfort of the forest a peace I had never known before.
I graduated in 1976, and on scholarship, attended the Adventist Seminary in Berrien Springs, Mich., returning to Massachusetts for an internship in the winter of 1979.
It all began with a mistaken phone call to a rebel hippie 1973. God often gives us a tiny morsel of substance to our weak faith, but if we hold on to that precious moment of epiphany, our destinies and the subsequent fulfillment will be ours in good and in bad times.
Steve Wall is a district pastor with Westminster and Reisterstown Seventh-day Adventist churches. He can be reached at stwall50@verizon.net.
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