Running Toward the Light

I remember it like it was yesterday. There we were, the head elder, his wife, and I, sitting in the church sanctuary next to an open window, Bibles open in our laps. Outside it was a glorious Australian summer, but inside, everything was old and worn out. The carpet was fraying. The chairs were faded. To 11-year-old me, even the head elder and his wife seemed old and worn out.

I had chosen to be baptized, but was told that I needed to have Bible studies first. Already I felt drawn to academics and wanted to know more about God than what I could learn from the Sabbath School lesson or the weekly sermon. When I was asked whom I wanted to study the Bible with, I bypassed the church pastor and chose the head elder and his wife. The choice seemed natural. The head elder was a professor of theology at Avondale College, and his wife was also employed in the Theology Department as an adjunct professor.[1]

So far, I had learned a lot—about Daniel and Revelation and the fundamental beliefs of the church—but something was still missing.

Mustering up as much courage as I could, I finally blurted out, “I want to know how to follow Jesus. What should I do?”

There was a slight pause. “Oh,” said the head elder’s wife awkwardly. “Why don’t you read the book Steps to Christ, by Ellen White? Don’t read the first chapter, though. I never understood it, and it’s not very relevant.” I looked at the head elder for confirmation, and he simply nodded in agreement.

I was baptized near the end of the year. It was a wonderful experience, and I was excited to declare my commitment to God. Sadly, however, I still did not know Jesus or what it meant to follow Him. Having dutifully read Steps to Christ, minus the first chapter, I was content to attend church each week and follow what I perceived to be the rules of the Bible.

Running Toward the Light

It wasn’t until five years later that I faced the first turning point in my spiritual journey.

By then I was a pensive, introspective teenager obsessed with classic literature and poetry. I had recently broken up with my boyfriend of three years and was devastated in the way only a teenager can be devastated. One day, as I comforted my misery by reading Emily Dickinson’s “I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain” for the millionth time, I had a moment of enlightenment. Perhaps it came from the poetic revery of death and not knowing. Whatever it was, I suddenly realized that I had never been born again, did not personally know Jesus, and did not have a clue how to find Him.

On second thought, there was one thing I did know.

I had read The Pilgrim’s Progress many times and remembered the part where Evangelist told Christian to flee from the City of Destruction and run toward the little Wicket Gate. I understood enough about the story to recognize that this Wicket Gate was a metaphor for entering into the kingdom of God through Jesus. Like Christian, I wasn’t sure where Jesus was, and couldn’t see the Gate. But Evangelist had told Christian that if he ran toward the light that he could see, he would soon find the Gate.

I put down my volume of Emily Dickinson poetry and made a decision that changed the course of my life. I decided to run toward the light.

That afternoon I went to the storage shed in my family’s backyard and found a large cardboard box. In it I placed all the things that I knew that, on a personal level, were idols, even though there was nothing wrong with them. In went my Emily Dickinson poetry, my Wordsworth, Longfellow, Robert Frost, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. In too went items that were emotionally connected to my broken relationship. I closed the lid and threw the box and its contents into the dumpster.

I then began to look for Jesus. Every day I read my Bible and I prayed, and instead of spending my spare time crying over poetry, I read books on theology, Christian living, and discipleship. I didn’t really know what would happen, and I didn’t have any expectations. But I did notice that a change was taking place. Christian books no longer seemed boring and dull. The Bible became interesting. I began to feel fulfilled.

Six months into my experiment I had a conversion experience. One day I finished reading a book on surrender and started praying. As I prayed, the sense of God’s presence broke into my awareness. I couldn’t have really explained it if anyone had asked me what had happened. But in that moment I knew beyond any doubt that I was a child of God, that He accepted and loved me, and that He had made me His. Jesus was now my greatest source of joy, and the next few years of my life were very happy.

From Joy to Fear

I wish I could say that that was all there was to my Christian experience—that from that moment my journey to heaven was paved with gold and strewn with roses.

The truth is a bit more complicated.

No sooner had I found Jesus than I began to try to earn His approval.

This was the second spiritual turning point in my life.

I received a compiled edition of all nine volumes of Testimonies for the Church for my nineteenth birthday. It was rich brown leather, with a zip that closed in a satisfying way. I could hardly wait to read it. That evening I went to my room with a notebook and pen, and began to study the Testimonies. During the next few months I wrote down every behavioral injunction or rule that I could find. They were all ostensibly good things.

Pray often.

Eat moderately.

Don’t wear jewelry.

Dress simply and modestly.

But somewhere in the process of rule-gathering, I became obsessed with the idea that if I followed all the rules to their utmost letter, I could become perfect and reach God’s standard of holiness.

Soon I was praying three times a day for an hour each time.

I began fasting two days a week (sometimes without water).

I became worried that anything decorative that I owned might be a form of jewelry, and threw them away.

I purposefully bought unattractive clothes to help curb my pride.

Before I knew what had happened, my joy and peace in Christ were replaced by fear and anxiety and the burden of trying to figure out what “perfect” actually is.

My religion looked like this for seven years. During this time I plumbed the depths of my moral brokenness and discovered just how impossible it was to be good enough for God. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t measure up.

I attempted to keep the Sabbath as perfectly as I could, for example. But I noticed that I was relieved when the sun began to set on Sabbath afternoon. I continued to dress modestly and plainly, and sometimes people complimented me. But I felt myself flush with pride when I received these compliments, and instantly knew that my modesty was merely a facade. Worse still, while I spent those years working as a Bible worker and literature evangelist, I didn’t love any of the people I was trying to reach. My prayers and journal entries became judgmental and focused on the faults of other people. But while I judged everyone around me, I felt judged and mistreated by them.

The gospel, it turns out, is really simple. It isn’t about Jesus. It is Jesus.

I finally reached a place where I could no longer keep going. I felt like I was nothing more than a hypocrite, and that everyone else was too. Just as I was ready to give up on following Jesus, however, the third spiritual turning point in my life occurred.

Overflowing Blessings

A friend invited me to join a volunteer project in Lebanon. I didn’t have other plans that summer, so I went. I soon found myself in a small mountain village trying to interact with locals in a mixture of English and broken Arabic phrases. One afternoon I walked past a small stone house clinging to the side of a rocky outcropping. Growing up against the house was an apricot tree, weighed down heavily with fruit.

Suddenly I heard an old man calling from the open door. “Tfaddali, tfaddali [come in]!”

“Marhaba [hello],” I said, using up all the Arabic I really knew. The old man laughed and motioned to me to open the bag slung across my shoulder. Before I could register what was happening, he lifted a bucket of fresh apricots and poured them into my open bag. Soft, ripe apricots filled and then overflowed the bag, tumbling onto the ground with careless abandon. I felt the way I had imagined it would feel when I was a kid and heard people talk about God opening the windows of heaven to pour out a blessing.

That was not the last time I experienced Lebanese hospitality. Everywhere, perfect strangers invited me into their homes, offered me food and something to drink, and treated me as if I were an honored guest.

Somewhere between the overflowing bag of apricots and the freshly baked flatbread smeared with olive oil and za’atar, I began to see glimmers of God’s character.

“If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children,” Jesus once said, “how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!” (Matt. 7:11). I reasoned that if people, sinful and fallen though they may be, can be so generous and hospitable to strangers, God’s generosity and love must be even greater.

I had never asked God for very much because I didn’t think I deserved very much. Now I decided to ask.

My summer in Lebanon turned into a longer volunteer stint teaching English at Middle East University in Beirut. Often, in the evenings and early mornings, I sat on the rooftop of the dormitory where I lived and stared out over the city and the distant Mediterranean Sea. My prayers were changing. I had stopped complaining about the sins and injustices of other people. Instead I asked God to bless me.

Blessings began to fill my life and overflow it, just as the apricots had overflowed my bag.

Twelve months later, through a series of miracles, I was living in America and married to the kind of person I had always dreamed of marrying but thought I would never find. A few years after that, we welcomed our daughter into the world. My world was now complete.

Here is where the fourth and final spiritual turning point of my life thus far took place.

The Simplicity of the Gospel

In 2022 I began studying toward a master’s degree in church history at Andrews University. I had already come a long way from my days of obsessive perfectionism and fearing God’s anger and judgment.

In the years since the bucket of apricots, I had deconstructed both my faulty theology and my understanding of myself. I understood that salvation is a gift from God, not something that must be earned through hard work. I recognized that God is good and gives good things to those who don’t deserve them. But a dark shadow of doubt still lingered.

What if God’s forgiveness and love were not enough? What if I still failed to please Him?

I chose to write my thesis on perfection, comparing the theology of John Wesley and Ellen White. For me, it was more than an academic exercise. It was a personal search for truth.

I wrote for hours on end, books piled high on my desk, and my brow furrowed in deep lines of concentration. But rather than alleviate my fears, the research seemed to amplify and intensify my spiritual doubts. Finally, in desperation, I pushed the books to one side and closed my computer. In my mind I saw myself back at the start of my journey, asking the head elder and his wife how I could know Jesus. They were theologians and didn’t know. Yet here I was, on the pathway to also becoming a theologian, and I was still unable to truly answer that simple question.

In my frustration and discouragement I picked up John Wesley’s personal account of his conversion and reread it. This time I read it, not to find content for my writing, but to find out how I could have the same experience.

When I was finished, I finally held all the essential pieces of the gospel in my hands. To my surprise, as I examined these pieces and put them all together, I saw the face of Jesus.

The gospel, it turns out, is really simple. It isn’t about Jesus. It is Jesus.

Thousands of years ago God “preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying, ‘In you all the nations shall be blessed’ ” (Gal. 3:8). “Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made. He does not say, ‘And to seeds,’ as of many, but as of one, ‘And to your Seed,’ who is Christ” (verse 16). The promises, of course, are the promises of the covenant. I had always assumed that these blessings were blessings for me to enjoy through obedience. Now I knew that they never were and never will be for me.

The promises are for Jesus, the only one who could ever deserve them.

If I accept, through faith, that Jesus’ death is my death, and that His resurrection is my resurrection—if I repent, surrender, and believe—then, through faith in Him, His life is counted as my own. I am now accepted as a child of God, because Jesus is the Son of God. Through Him I can produce works of righteousness that God can accept. Through Him I can receive the promises and enter heaven.

“For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. . . . And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to promise” (verses 26-29).

Ellen White expressed the gospel in this way: “Righteousness is obedience to the law. The law demands righteousness, and this the sinner owes to the law; but he is incapable of rendering it. The only way in which he can attain to righteousness is through faith. By faith he can bring to God the merits of Christ, and the Lord places the obedience of His Son to the sinner’s account. Christ’s righteousness is accepted in place of man’s failure, and God receives, pardons, justifies, the repentant, believing soul, treats him as though he were righteous, and loves him as He loves His Son.”[2]

I finally saw Jesus, and He is not who I thought He was. He is so much better.

He is my Savior, my Friend.

Yesterday I sat on the couch with my 5-year-old as the afternoon sun shimmered through the open window. We had just finished family worship, and I had told her about heaven and how much Jesus loves us.

“Mama,” she said as she turned her face up toward mine, “I can’t wait to go to heaven and live in Jesus’ house!”

“Neither can I,” I whispered. “Neither can I.”

[1] The details in some of the stories have been changed for privacy.

[2] Ellen G. White, in Review and Herald, Nov. 4, 1890.