by Sarah Schaefer    

      Time and time again throughout my childhood I sat astonished and open-mouthed as I listened to the missionary speakers give their testimonies at church.  They’d lived a sinful life, done drugs, were addicted to alcohol, and had done time in prison.  Their mothers abandoned them and their fathers beat them.  They were avowed atheists, set in their ways, and it was only through an incredible miracle that they realized their need for a savior.  Now, they’re living in deepest darkest Africa witnessing to the cannibal natives.

 I was always amazed and inspired at their testimonies and secretly wished for a similar or even a better one.  But no, I was destined to have a boring testimony.  I was born to two Christian parents, grew up in a loving home, and was saved at the age of five.  How dull can a testimony get?  I longed for an amazing testimony like the missionaries’.

I was born with a cancerous brain tumor in my cerebellum.  The doctors discovered it when I was five years old.  They were able to remove the tumor with minimal damage to my body, and no chemotherapy or radiation treatments were needed.  I recovered quite quickly and completely.  Undoubtedly, though, if I had been born even 40 years earlier, either my brain would have been severely damaged or I wouldn’t have survived.  It is only by the grace of God that I am alive.

When I was thirteen years old, I struggled with severe doubts about my faith.  I couldn’t understand such concepts as how time could have been created, how God was never created, and eternity.  That summer, I went to a Bible camp for a week and learned that it wasn’t for me to understand, I just had to believe.  I rededicated my life to Christ that summer.  It was only by the grace of God that that particular speaker was there that week and that my counselor had the right words to say to me.

The summer after my freshman year at Cornerstone, I felt God calling me to work at that same summer camp as a counselor.  Well, as we all know, college is expensive and Bible camps don’t pay much.  God graciously provided for my all my needs and allowed me to work at Lake Ellen not only that summer, but last summer as well.  By his grace I was able to witness many lives changed for Christ and see him at work in my life as well.

God’s grace makes everything possible.  It is by the grace of God that I am alive.  It is by the grace of God that I had loving parents and an amazing childhood.  It is by the grace of God that the missionary speaker survived his abusive childhood.  It is by the grace of God that he is now called to minister to others.  It is by the grace of God that we all draw our next breath, and it’s by the grace of God that I have a testimony just as amazing as the missionary’s, because it is the grace that makes it amazing.

e-mail: sarah_k_schaefer@cornerstone.edu