Fall 2004 « Biola Magazine « Biola University

A Prodigal Alumnus’ Letter to a Friend

Dear Mike,

More than 10,000 sunrises have awakened us with a gentle nudge since we said our last goodbyes at graduation. I remember you well, Mike — always a smile, with a laugh not trailing far behind. Although we didn’t always run in the same circles during our years at Biola (1972-1975), we were friends.

Not often, but on occasions, I have wondered where you are and what you are doing. You’ve been frozen in my mind’s eye — still in your early 20s, even though I know you are now middle aged, with all the joys and aches that brings. I was curious about you and other friends who had worn their faith comfortably during our college years — people who were genuine in their love for God and others around them. What I really wanted to know was had you stayed on course? Had you done things that mattered because they were beyond yourself? Had you been faithful to the call that beckoned you all those years ago?

My questions about you were answered recently as I was breezing through Biola Connections. I saw your name in “News & Notes” in the 1970s section, with a small bio on what you’ve been up to the past 30-plus years. You graduated from seminary, found Mrs. Right, and eventually had two daughters. Nice work bud — the white picket fence on the perfect cul-de-sac story, right? Not really. It seems you didn’t pick the scenario that many of the rest of us have strived for. You went and did something you had prepared for all along with your studies — you spent the next couple of decades doing missionary work in Europe.

You have stayed on course, Mike. You have been running the race … hard. And you have good company from what I’ve seen. Other alumni who I’ve heard about or met through various means have also given their lives to God’s service in one form or another. Not necessarily just as pastors or missionaries or in full-time Christian service — but laypeople, just as committed, who have remained faithful in ministering to believers and unbelievers alike. They’ve stayed true because they thought it would make a difference, both for them and the ones they’ve reached out to. As Henry Thoreau once quipped, “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.” Mike, you and the other committed ones have used your axes well.

This leaves me very humbled. While you and many others have been fruitful for decades in your service to God, I spent long stretches in mediocre spiritual stagnation. Usually I knew where my life should have been invested, but the years rolled together and slowly swept me out to open sea — driftwood for a tender, subtle tide that I never really felt jerk me away. But isn’t that how most seductions start? With a gentle touch, a soft question — not a hard jerk. Suddenly, one day, the shoreline seems more distant and the current has turned rougher, colder. And that is what I became, colder, rougher. I did not give in completely to disbelief. I did not give up. I just floated with the tide, like all debris that has little sense of direction and purpose.

I became a wanderer in this world. One of many who knew the truth, had tasted God’s sweetness, and yet found ways to fall on broken, stony ground. And I had good company. Many of my friends from Biola — who 30 years ago had that glow of spiritual anticipation of what God had in store for them outside those halls of learning — have found tides that took them out as well. Some have returned, eventually, as I have; others still float far from shore. Having been there, my heart breaks for them — not because I’m more noble or wiser than they — but because I know how lonely it is out there. I know how numbing and exhausting it is to fight a current that is slowly drowning one’s faith. In the Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis writes that “‘Nothing’ is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man’s best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why…”

Your story does not end with you on the mission field in Europe. Your bio mentions you’ve come home to Oregon. I cannot pronounce your terminal disease — but I get the picture. How did you sign your letter to me the other week? “In the hands of the Lamb. Bent but not broken.” It told me so much more about you than those few words you wrote. You signed your letter with “Submit to God and be at peace with Him; in this way good will come to you” (Job 22:21). Your legs that played touch football at Biola with me now have a wheelchair to embrace them. My dad has Parkinson’s and prostate cancer and is also wheelchair bound. But his spirit is not; he shines with God’s love and peace. My mom has Alzheimer’s and accepts it with the grace only God can bestow. Both met at Biola over 50 years ago and have spent the last five decades serving God faithfully. Why do faithful servants suffer?

I no longer wander in my faith — but at times I do wonder in my faith. Wandering brings listless confusion. Wondering asks fair questions of an infinite God. So many hard questions for God about suffering, testing. Hard questions. Questions I’m sure, Mike, you have also asked at times. I think the asking is a good process, one that God embraces. He isn’t afraid of them, why should we be? Wondering leads to discovery of who our God really is. He says He will reveal Himself to those who seek Him.

I am glad to reacquaint myself with you, Mike. You are a faithful warrior, along with your family, and many, many more Biolans like you. People who Hebrews 11 says the world is not worthy of. I took a longer journey to come full circle. Much wasted time. But God has the patience, it seems, to restore people like me. He lets us sit on the shelf for a while, then, in His time, dusts us off and finds ways to use us in spite of ourselves. He even uses our unfaithfulness to wear us down until we eventually reach out to be used for things that have eternal value. Faithlessness is exhausting because the Spirit can be quenched but not put out. The still, small voice haunts relentlessly. Gracious pain one might say. Numbing pain that only ceases when surrender takes the place of self-determination. Faith renewed, I think, sometimes tastes sweeter the second time around.

Please keep in touch Mike. And thank you for wearing your faith well.

Roy Siemens

Roy Siemens graduated from Biola in 1975 with a degree in Bible. He and his wife, Robin, live in Fallbrook, Calif., where they teach a home Bible study and attend Riverview Evangelical Free Church.