The following is a reflection written by my brother, Will Deur, on what he has learned this past year:
Nine and a half months after departing on her worldwide journey, Paige asked if I would write a guest blog about how my year has been, and what I have learned in the time since she left.
My year has been much less exciting than hers, and I have no blogging skills, but I figured I would give it a shot.
Following Paige’s departure, my summer quickly came to an end, and my second year of college began.
I am now one week into summer, and when I look back over the year I see a sort of a pattern in my experiences.
First, I recognize that it was a challenging year full of difficult decisions and questions, whether big or small. I had to ponder decisions relating to my college education that will directly impact my future. I asked myself if it was time to officially stop playing soccer after 16 years. I wondered if I should cut my hair or keep it. Maybe that isn’t so important, but it was still a question. On top of these questions, my classes were getting harder, and I needed to spend more time studying.
The second pattern I saw was that I repeatedly found myself with both the opportunity and the desire to dig deeper into my faith.
Rather than uncertainty, there was clarity.
I am thankful that this was the one thing that was clear to me, because by digging deeper into my faith I was able to find more peace and confidence while facing other questions.
This past year, I was able to take two religion classes that taught me about theology and about interpreting Paul’s letters, my new pastor established a college Bible study that I had the chance to attend every week, and our youth pastor invited me to go to the Passion worship conference. All of these experiences were meaningful and powerful in my life, but I’d like to share a little more about how the Passion Conference impacted me.
The conference was powerful, and it was an incredible feeling to worship and learn with a massive number of people my age and with some of the greatest Christian musicians leading us. The conference was put together by Louie Giglio, and the message that he presented put the overarching theme of the weekend into words. He described believers as flaming arrows in the hand of merciful God. Out of context, I’m sure it sounds like a common message, but when he spoke it, it really impacted me.
His point was that God is shooting us off into the world to share His love and good news. We need to be willing to trust Him and go where he calls us. Of course, this reminded me of Paige. She is a perfect model of this willingness. I never expected Paige to be the one to go around the world learning more about God’s world and sharing his love. I have never doubted her faith, I just never imagined she would live it out in this way. This made her choice to do exactly that strike me as a giant leap of faith, and she has been a role model to me and an example of what it can look like to take the message to heart and to be a flaming arrow for God. It doesn’t mean that I need to go on a trip far away to serve God, but it means that I should be willing to do whatever He calls me to do.
My takeaway from the last ten months and my hope going forward is that I can expand upon a year full of learning and become more active in living out my faith. It is important to me to continue to learn, but what my learning has taught me so far is that I also need to try my best to be active and to trust God’s plan for my life. I know that in a month’s time I will be grateful for the chance to talk to someone with many fresh experiences in that area.
Thanks for taking the time to read this, but now let’s hand it back over to my sister, the blogging wizard. Keep doing your thing and being a role model for me and for many others who want to know what it looks like to put their trust in God.
