11 I have seen something else under the sun:
The race is not to the swift
or the battle to the strong,
nor does food come to the wise
or wealth to the brilliant
or favor to the learned;
but time and chance happen to them all.
Ecclesiastes 9:11 (New International Version)
When I started to reflect on my experiences of the last six years while I was enrolled in college, I began to think about the many challenges, battles, and inconveniences that I encountered. However, this passage in Ecclesiastes has always reminded me that although I may attempt to plan my life and ambitions “time and chance” has a role in influencing what happens in my life.
As a senior in High School, I felt that I knew what I wanted to do, I had a sense of “calling” to do ministry. Because of this sense of “calling”, my initial college choice was a conservative Bible College in the southwestern part of Ohio. Although I had been raised in social conservative family and church, I felt out of place. Prior to arriving at this institution, I had been taught that women were not allowed to pastor but could preach, but this school prohibited women from even gracing the pulpit to deliver a sermon.
This was a minor conflict at the time, compared to how little diversity existed amongst my classmates. Most of the students were white, from small rural towns, and came from the same Christian denomination; I can admit that I was ill prepared for the transition, which ultimately lead me to transfer from the institution after just one semester.
Transferring from the Bible College was difficult, this was not apart of my original plan, I was suppose to graduate with a degree in Biblical Studies with a focus in Preaching Ministry. What else could I do; I had only wanted to do ministry, but my plan was altered. Transferring from the Bible College was not because of the academic challenge, but because I was lacking cultural simulation.
I went from one extreme to another; I enrolled into a HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities). This HBCU prided itself on being the precursor of all HBCU’s. The student enrollment was smaller than at my High School, but the students were from all over the United States and they look exactly like me. What I lacked previously, I was immersed in daily.
Most of the professors were Black and spoke in the vein I was accustom to in High School with my teacher Abu Toure. Every class, whether it was English, Psychology, or Political Science discussed the problems of Black America. However, I felt boxed in, I felt in addition to race problems we needed to discuss class and gender issues. Now I wrestled with the dilemma that this institution was too homogenous.
Only if you could have imagined what I was going through mentally and emotionally. I was a freshman in college and already I had stop pursuing my childhood dream of ministry and left Bible College. Now I was at an HBCU, feeling like an outcast. This was not what I had envisioned when my mother drove me to College (a detail I sometimes forget), and told me to do my best. I questioned myself daily and indulge in self-pity, but one evening after hours of talking with my mentor on the phone, he encouraged me to apply to his Alma Mater
Otterbein College. I thought out loud to him and recall myself saying, “transfer again, are you serious Derek?” a feeling of uncertainty and failure overtook me at that moment.
Now a graduate of Otterbein College, I wonder what would have happened if I had never taken the advice of my mentor and applied to Otterbein. Otterbein to me at the time was too expensive and their
admission requirements were ambiguous, which to me was intimidating. By this time, I had come to realize that I had nothing to lose; I stepped out on faith and this faith allowed me to experience the blessings that God had for me.
I just finished reading my pastor’s book
“Crazy Faith: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Lives”. In the first chapter,
Pastor Smith writes, “Having faith means we understand that expecting God to be God also means we understand that God’s ways are not our ways… God being God is completely out of our control”.
The races and battles that I experienced in College did not always make sense to me but to God, they always had a purpose and were out of my control. Once I had submitted to God’s will my life took a drastic turn. Most people in the beginning thought I had lost my mind, but what my faith in God produced was tremendous.
If I had never had the faith to endure “time and chance” and attended Otterbein College, I would have never become a member of
Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity (Omicron Rho Chapter), I would have never been elected to serve on my fraternity’s National Board of Directors (two terms), and I would have never been selected to serve as the first student of Color (an inclusive word used at Otterbein to address all minorities) on the Board of Trustees at Otterbein College. I would not have had the courage to challenge the bigotry and sexism that eventually caused me to leave my former church because of a New Testament class that challenged my Christian beliefs to the core. After venturing away from ministry with my eyes set on law school, it was Otterbein that continuously “called” upon me to do service, which rekindled my passion for ministry and has led me to attend
Vanderbilt University’s School of Divinity in the Fall.
When I stop trying to be the fastest and the strongest, I realized Otterbein was where God wanted to prepare me for a “greater work”. Because it was at Otterbein were I came across an inclusive community of people who only wanted to see every student succeed regardless of race, gender, class, and sexual orientation. At Otterbein, I felt I had finally experienced what Jesus
described as “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”.
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