I pondered on how God has viewed our being individuals whose moment of stillness has not been so apparently fulfilled. The line in the bible that says “Be still, and know that I am God” really means, in its complete contemporary biblical setting, “Cease, relax, and shut up! Spare time for me and know that I am God”. In one of Fr. Paul’s homilies last holy week, the same verse came out and I was taken back to the time when I devotedly listened to God in the stillness of my heart.
Knowing that I haven’t read anything religious printed in the Collegian since I started writing late last year, I thought that this will be the start of something different. Few days ago, someone close to me asked, “Are you not reluctant to write about God in your column?” “With what God has done for me all these years, writing won’t even be enough”, I answered without reservations.

Few years ago, a dear friend gave me a book called “The Purpose Driven Life”. I heard that it was a bestseller – students read it during bouts of silence in bus rides and even successful businessmen browsed the pages inside café houses. Curious, I turned to the page that carries the question “What makes God smile?”

It says that God smiles when people praise and thank him personally. God loves it when praises and adoration are expressed for Him. Prayer is the way to His heart. Prayer, spoken or unspoken, brings miracles.

Lines from the book struck me hard. They reminded me to wake up from the existing state of hallucination to God’s wonderful state of reality. To be in that reality, is to pray. God commands everyone to pray.

In this lifetime, many a times I find myself trying to square circles with only God’s armor to cling to. With a firm foundation in Him, those times would equate to believing and claiming what He has promised that I could move mountains and that when legions of principalities turn up my way, I could never be taken apart.

Look around. There are a lot of spiritual warriors in SDSU. Visit the Pius XII Newman Center or the many Christian churches around Brookings and notice that the majority of the church goers are students. That doesn’t happen in other Christian countries, believe me.

When I was in the Netherlands and lived there for two years, only the elderly attended services. Most horribly, there were only a handful in the church; I could even count them with my fingers. Here though, I was left open-mouthed and overly astounded on my first attendance as college students flocked the church.

In a liberated country like the U.S., my idea of a church service is no more than what I experienced in Europe. That only few American teenagers still believe in God’s great promises. I was proven wrong though at the sight of an army of God – students earnestly praying, standing ready with truth as the belt, righteousness as the breastplate, and as shoes the readiness to announce the Good News. Young men and women that I first thought know no place but a night pub were present.

These students in church, I call them the warrior children. They, who dropped their swords, ran towards God and took refuge in His quiet place of rest, even for just one day in a week. Amen, for each student and every living soul inside the church. Amen, for all the desires of their hearts, which I am certain, will be answered in God’s precious time.

In Brookings, most students, if not all, are companions on the journey. They are the warrior children, who together laze around in joy at what they have done with their lives, how they have prayed. This, they all know, would make God smile even more.