In Philippians 1, Paul speaks joyfully of his imprisonment as it has helped to spread the gospel, “13 so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ. 14 And most of the brothers, having become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, are much more bold to speak the wordwithout fear.” Throughout this pandemic, it may have felt sometimes as if we were locked away while practicing social distancing, but just like with Paul, in Tide4Christ it has really served to advance the gospel. By giving us restrictions that required us to think of new ways to grow spiritually together that would not have been thought of otherwise, many of which we plan on keeping around, the pandemic has actually helped us in terms of our spiritual growth. While Sunday night service had to be moved to an online lesson, having it as such allowed for us to meet in small groups every Sunday afternoon. These were my favorite parts of the school year, where we could grow together, sharing any thoughts and questions we had on our mind and having deep discussions ranging from the problems in our modern-day church to just straight up scripture from God’s word. While for safety we could not meet in full in our student center for Wednesday night Bible class, we were instead able to divide up into a guys’ class and girls’ class, where people were more confident in speaking up and sharing their thoughts with everyone. We were able to do things such as book studies, where the girls read through Crazy Love and the guys studied Radical, two books that detail what it should look like for us to be relentlessly in love with God and radically devoted to following him. While we were not able to meet at campus on Mondays for devos like before, we were able to meet at the church building at other times for new events such as Midnight with the Master, where we meet up late at night, sat on the floor, and just worshipped God and studied his word for hours. Every time Satan closed a door, God opened a new, even better one just nearby, and if that’s not cause for worship, I don’t know what is.
Daniel Goode is from Huntsville, Alabama. He is graduating in December in Mechanical Engineering.
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