Why I Do What I Do.

We slammed our bodies into seats, backpacks onto the floor, all in a rush of exchanging last minute greetings and reminders before our test in Augustine today. Hey! How're you doing? and Epistemic authority is someone who knows what they're talking about, moral authority is one that lives it out -- to be a good authority you have to be both. And I got teasing about not being at the Reformed Campus Ministry presentation last night -- yes, I hung signs for it, yes, I ran into some of the guys coming out from it, and yes, I was doing something else.

Keith turned to shut up both me and Matt as we semi-argued about it. "I know how to get her there, how to make sure that she comes."

"No, you don't," I said.

"Yes, I do," he insisted.

"Nuhuh."

He grinned. "I'll get Professor Miller to come speak..."

There was a second while my brain thought of our humanities professor -- who I loved -- but it's hardly failsafe. Then I realized who he meant.

"She loves him," he added.

"YES!" I said, rather loudly. "I WOULD COME!"

Poor Matt, he had no clue who we were talking about, and our exclamations of "WHAT? YOU DON'T KNOW WHO HE IS??? HE'S AWESOME!" hardly helped.

But I thoroughly recanted as Keith continued to list more and more ridiculous scenarios of things I'd miss to come hear him speak.

The truth is, though, I wouldn't necessarily miss all those things to hear him speak. I do love hearing him, and I have great respect for what he says. College has been an exercise in figuring out which things to make time to listen to, though, because there is not enough time to listen to everything that could be good and beneficial to listen to.

I'd go to see him.

I'd go because I love him, because he changed my life with his Missionary Preparedness Test of unquestioning, prompt, cheerful obedience for a year.

I'd go because of him.

It's a point that made its way into my head as we read through John in staff devos at camp this summer, one that I have blogged about before. Following.

Following is relational. Discipleship is relational. What I will drop schoolwork and other responsibilities for is, ultimately, relational. To this day, as a junior in college, I'm pretty sure that the latest I've ever stayed up doing homework is three in the morning. (Which, granted, is late.) But I do not even have a count on the times I've stayed up past that with someone else, or the times someone else has stayed up past that with me. For whatever reason -- because we needed to talk, because we were having fun, because we just didn't feel like being in our own beds, in our own rooms, alone.

It's something I've come to pinpoint as the driving factor what I will or will not do -- what are the relationships that drive this? (Useful if you want to understand me, I guess...) It's not always the only factor, but it tends to be primary.

And that makes it hard to answer why questions sometimes, the questions of friendship. Because, in the end, I can only answer by saying that it is about communion.

But it's legit. Jesus came to seek and to save the lost. To bring us back into a right relationship with God. So we love God because He first loved us and love others because of the same reason.