Because He is Love – Part 1

Dr. Charles Stanley once said something to the like, “Keep a journal of God’s faithfulness because a day is going to come when you will need to look back and hold on to God’s faithful nature and be strengthened through the trial.” So this writing is not for you—it is for me. It has taking me a month to write it, mainly because it was hard to write about something I don’t feel, and may not even believe. But I had forced myself to write it hoping there is a good outcome from it.

Because He is Love by Fadi

What you are looking at in this photo is King College Road: this is the “engineering street” that every student must walk to go to their classes because the engineering buildings are at its right and left. Sometimes when I walk through St. George campus I wonder to myself, “How did I get here? Just four years ago I was a general labor and a forklift operator working at a warehouse for minimum wages…and now I am in my final year of graduating!” I look back at my life and see God has protected me, directed me, and pretty much fixed me through every step of my way.

God in His grace, goodness and wisdom saw me as this young confused man with no self-confidence whatsoever. He took me, fixed me, changed me, and set myself on the rock. Why? I wonder, “Why did He do it?” In my naivety I didn’t even know I needed help, I didn’t even know I was lost in my confusion about life, I didn’t even know there is a way out. Yet somehow, for some reason, He looked down and saw me and decided to intervene and help me. I remember in 2003, after I graduated from high school, probably two weeks after I started my job at the warehouse I was working overtime, it was summer time and the weather outside was so beautiful. Yet I was stuck in the warehouse that evening packing box after box all day on a long conveyor system. I remember my head sinking down with both hands resting on the box in front of me. The lady working with me asked, “Are you ok?” I said, “Yes, I just never thought life would end up this way.” She understood right away what I meant because she said, “I know, I know.” And I wondered how many souls like me all around the world lived day to day without a goal or a dream—it was terrible to feel dead while “officially” considered alive.

I remember how in 2007 I was scared of enrolling at University of Toronto’s Engineering Program because I heard it was Canada’s toughest—so I wished another university would accept me first. But UofT accepted me first so I enrolled in it…then I was accepted by the other university. My studies have gone by relatively uneventful so I remember when I read how that UofT Engineering was ranked 8th in the world by U.S. News & World Report for the year 2009 (that’s ahead of universities such as: Cornell University, Princeton University, Harvard University, Oxford University, Yale University, and Tokyo Institute of Technology)…I thought to myself, “What am I doing here?” then I thought to myself, “I belong here…I study here.” And I really felt like I belong at UofT; I usually don’t feel like I belong in a lot of places, yet even that, God changed—He changed me so I started feeling like I belong somewhere (a wonderful feeling, I must say).

So I wonder, “Why did He help me? Why did He change me? Why did He give me confidence? Why did He give me hope?” And the more I think about it the more I keep coming back to the same conclusion, “Because He is love.” Often times when I read love quotes I tell myself, “Only if love was this easy to put in a sentence or two!” The Bible summarizes love by saying: God is love. But the Bible explains God through thousands of pages, and it takes eternity to know Him.