I watch the college students race into the auditorium for their Christian conference, Bibles and notebooks in hand, and both eagerness and uncertainty on their faces.
I look carefully as they all rush by me where I’m sitting in the back with all the older folks and the visiting professors.
And I think: Which one are you?
I see myself in a thousand faces. I remember those college years of joy and sorrow and confusion, of terrible choices and marvelous insight. I remember how I felt everything too deeply for my own good. The angst. The hope. The possibility. The quick descent into despair one day and the labor upwards to joy the next. The poetry. The music. The fear.
I see myself in each face, especially that girl clutching the new journal that represents all she wishes and all she’s yearning to understand. It’s a hungry look she’s wearing. It’s a desperation for truth.
I speak to her this morning.