About a month ago, I had the chance to speak at Olivet Nazarene University outside of Chicago. It’s a beautiful campus, and for the two days I was there, they put me up in the President’s guest house.
On my second night, they had me do a Q&A with the students to talk about Quitter and chasing dreams and what to do after graduation. At 5:20, someone knocked on the door to pick me up.
On the way over to the event, my ride introduced himself as the Dean of Students. It was hard to contain my laughter. You see that very day, 17 years ago, I was having a very different experience with a Dean of Students. Two days after Halloween, at Samford University in 1994, the Dean of Students was putting me on a year-long social suspension.
A friend and I had exploded a fire extinguisher under someone’s door in our dormitory. Apparently fire extinguisher fumes set off fire alarms, which apparently forces 400 students to be evacuated at 1 a.m. on Halloween night, which apparently makes the Birmingham fire department come with trucks a wailing, which apparently is frowned on in that establishment.
So, in that moment, I had to laugh at God’s sense of humor. At Olivet, 17 years after almost being kicked out of college, I got to tell 2,500 college students that Jesus loves them. At Liberty University, I got to tell 10,000 students that God is crazy about them. To see God bring a mess like me around full circle made me laugh with him at his beautifully unexpected way of connecting all the dots.
I didn’t plan it. I couldn’t have predicted it. And yet, here it is. Full circle.
Has that ever happened in your life? Have you ever stopped in a moment and realized how far God has brought you down a path you thought you’d never step on?
Have you ever seen his sense of humor at work that way?
