Earlier this week I had the pleasure of getting to meet Amena Brown during her visit to campus. She is on a very short list of ‘spoken-word’ poets that I’ve ever had the pleasure to hear.
She spoke in chapel and was FANTASTIC!
For so many reasons…
And as a part of her presentation she shared about how God showed up in a very real way one day while she was checking in at an airport…
She said there were 4 questions that the person behind the ticket counter asked that God seemed to use to pierce her heart… to the depths of her soul.
Those questions?
- Where are you going?
- Do you have any baggage to check?
- Do you know how much your baggage weighs?
- Are you carrying anything for anyone else?
She shared those questions with her college-aged audience — knowing quite well that these questions are incredibly important ones to be considered — and dealt with — during these formative years.
Where are you going?
Do you know where you are going? Do you know why you’re here and where you need to go? Why is it important to get there? Working with this generation of students we know the challenges that many of them are up against. We know that for far too many, college has become less about growing up — and becoming the person that God wants them to be — and more about having fun, making friends, exploring the new boundaries of living on their own… and, oh yes, getting a degree (that they may or my not put to use).
Challenging students to consider this question not only shapes their future, but it should bring better shape to their present. In order to get to where they want to go… someday… they need to make some important decisions — and take some important actions — in their present.
Do you have any baggage to check?
We know, often much more than students, that they carry with them a lot of baggage. We all do. But the level to which we are aware of the baggage we carry — what it is and why we carry it — shapes our ability to live (or live well or not live) with it.
Students often need assistance identifying the baggage in their life, understanding how to deal with it, and how to live in light of it.
Do you know how much your baggage weighs?
Another important question… because we don’t often count the cost of the baggage we carry. Just like the airlines charge an extra fee for “overweight” bags, our lives are penalized when we choose (yes, it is often a choice) to carry around baggage that is too much… too heavy… more than we can or should attempt to carry on our own.
Many of our students need help with letting go and/or allowing God to carry the bulk of the load. Letting go is hard. But we need to walk with students in such a way that we help them to know it’s not only OK… but the best way to move forward.
Are you carrying anything for anyone else?
This may be the most profound of the 4 questions. Why? Because whether we realize it or not, the baggage we carry is often not our own. Too often we take on the pains of others — and make them our own. We take on the ways that others have disappointed us, or belittled us, or let us down… and we allow it to define us. Or maybe it’s the way that others have shaped (or mis-shaped) our understanding of something or someone and so the way we live life reflects this misunderstanding… and things are not right.
Again, we stand uniquely positioned to walk alongside students during some very formative years, with the chance to challenge some of their misconceptions and preconceived notions about people, places, issues, faith, etc.
4 important questions — for students and for us.
2 thoughts on “4 Questions Every Student Should Be Asked”
These four questions have the potential to be profoundly helpful to students, as long as they are taken seriously. Questions like these almost require a certain level of readiness for introspection (such as is when a person feels dissastified with the course of their life, or feel that they are not living up to their own religious convictions). Students certainly come across these times during college.
In the wake of the situation at Penn State, specifically the riots that students perpetrated in response to the firing of the football coach–and not to the sexual abuse of children or the cover-up that actually got him fired, I wonder how the rioting students would answer these questions. What kind of “baggage” were they carrying that lead them to stand up for the coach, knowing that he had protected someone who raped children? Granted, this situation is not representative of the experience of the majority of college students in America, but this morning, as they woke from the hangover of last night’s violence, these students entered the vulnerable space of needing to justify their actions and not being able to do so. They have stumbled upon fertile ground for reflection of the sort posed by the four questions above.
Very insightful Derek! Thank you!!
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