Micah Bragg is the RUF International Campus Minister at Columbia University.
Sometimes God allows us to experience or witness something that shakes us from our routine and reminds us that He is present and active.
Earlier this year, while sitting at church, I looked over and saw one of my students from RUF-I who had graduated the semester before. I was shocked since I had spent a lot of time in one-on-ones with this specific student, and the last time we had met (several months ago at that point) he was very clearly not a believer—he only appreciated Jesus as a moral ideal, viewing Christianity as just one of many religions.
He had attended an event our group had done at that church last year, but I would never have expected him to return on his own. I was even more shocked to learn that he had already started attending a Bible study with the pastor, joined a community group, and was getting to know more and more people at the church. Today, he is a baptized believer who speaks about his faith in a way I simply could not have imagined a year ago.
Among the few conversions I’ve witnessed in this ministry, his feels the most impossible to me; I still can’t believe it. While he met many Christians along his journey, first at RUF-I and then through the community of this local church, his conversion felt absolutely miraculous—clearly God’s work rather than any human effort.
My latest reading (besides my epic seafaring fiction read: Master and Commander) has been G.K. Chesterton’s wit-filled Orthodoxy. And since I am writing this while looking out at Columbia’s famous statue of Thomas Jefferson, I’m thinking about some of the harsh but often funny critiques Chesterton had for Deists like Jefferson:
“They say that God is a thing like electricity or gravitation; a blind and boundless thing; a thing not to be loved but only obeyed… the deists do not adore deity.”
Our God isn’t just an impersonal force defining truth and reality—He actively works in our lives. We stifle our own joy, our anticipation of delightful surprise and wonder, when we limit God in our minds and place Him in a predictable box.
Every conversion is a miracle: a direct action of God as someone’s hard heart is inexplicably made soft and human. I think we often live like deists. As I sat in church that day, I felt embarrassed to have forgotten that God is in the business of doing miracles.
This year, one of my goals is to simply “stay awake”—to remain aware that God, as a personal Spirit, is near and active. We should expect Him to act and remain watchful for wonders far beyond what our own plans and ambitions could achieve.
Photo by Hannah Busing on Unsplash