Jesus Christ: The greatest gift of all By Sarah Young via Christian Post
One Christmas, just a few years after my graduation from Wellesley College, I traveled home to Virginia to be with my family for the holidays. My brother, Tim, who had recently returned from studying at L’Abri, a Christian community in the Swiss Alps, was there too.
Tim had been struggling for years to find his way, having dropped out of three universities, even though his grades were excellent. The Tim I encountered that Christmas, however, was remarkably changed. I was amazed to find him to be warm, loving, and much to my surprise, very concerned about my spiritual well-being. He was, simply, a new person.
Tim had become a Christian.
Now is your chance to support Gospel News Network.
We love helping others and believe that’s one of the reasons we are chosen as Ambassadors of the Kingdom, to serve God’s children. We look to the Greatest Commandment as our Powering force.
I wasn’t a Christian, and I had given up on my search for truth after majoring in philosophy in college — looking for answers but finding none. Tim gave me a copy of Francis Schaeffer’s Escape from Reason and asked me to read it. I found it so fascinating that I read through it in one sitting! In this small book, I was astonished to find answers to big questions that I’d long ago dismissed as unanswerable. As a result of Tim’s loving concern and Schaeffer’s brilliant book, I decided to reopen my quest for truth.
Eventually, I wrote to L’Abri, where Tim had become a Christian, and asked if I could become a student there. After sending the letter, I got back into my routine and forgot about the request. Then, much to my surprise, I received a letter from L’Abri notifying me that I had been accepted to study there for three months. I wasn’t so sure that this was a good idea. I had to decide if I really wanted to leave my job and my familiar lifestyle in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Instinctively, I knew that if I left, I would never return to my current way of life.
It was a struggle, but eventually, I made the life-changing decision to go to L’Abri. I was hoping that my studies there would help me find a solid foundation to build my life on. The stakes were high: I was searching for absolute, unchanging truth!
When I arrived in Switzerland a few months later, Tim and his newlywed Swiss wife were living in Lausanne. I stayed with them for a few days while I recovered from jetlag. Then, on a gloriously snowy Sunday morning, they drove me to nearby Huemoz, a lovely Alpine village where the main branch of L’Abri is located. That night, while trying to sleep on a mattress in the middle of the floor of an overcrowded bedroom, I began to question my decision to leave everything behind. Thankfully, I was soon sent to French L’Abri in Thollon, a tiny village in the French Alps. There were only about fifteen students at this branch, and I was grateful to have my own bed — even though it was the creaky top bunk of an ancient metal bed.
