MESSENGER AT 'THE STUPE'

Some might have called her an angel in disguise. I can't even remember her name. I just remember her kind, welcoming smile when I walked into the college coffee shop looking for a place to study between classes. As I looked around for an empty spot in the busy room, I noticed her alone in a booth. Graciously, she waved to me to join her.

I was then a graduate student at Wheaton College, near Chicago, Illinois. I'd started there the previous year on funds I'd saved from working, but both my parents had died months apart. As their still-single daughter, it fell to me to move back to Washington state to empty their home and handle probate. The task would have been impossible for my married sister with her young family and job, living on the other side of the state. Nine months later, the house “empty” but still unsold, caring people urged me to quit waiting around....to resume my studies and to trust God for its sale in a depressed economy. So here I was, pursuing an educational and vocational dream, early thirties, single and very much alone, taking temporary jobs like babysitting and filing to help cover expenses beyond my depleting personal savings.

The coffee shop was known as "The Stupe”--yes, strange, but an acrostic carryover from its former location close to the physical education department: STudent Union Physical Education. The high-backed wooden benches had a classic aura that reminded me of alumni legends like missionary martyr Jim Elliott and famed evangelist Billy Graham. As I slid into her booth, we exchanged names and told about our fields of study. I shared how I'd returned to graduate school after my parents died, hoping to land a job with nearby Christian publishers. She said, “I'll pray for you.”

A week or so later, I returned to “The Stupe” for a study break. There she was again, beckoning to me. As I sat down, she said, “I have a verse for you. It's Hebrews 6:10: 'God is not unjust so as to forget your work and the love you have shown toward His name, in having ministered and in still ministering to the saints'” (NASB).

I can't recall if she just gave me the reference, or a card with that verse written out. But it was as if someone had summoned a wind to fill my drooping sails. She was God's messenger to remind me that despite the negative circumstances that had dragged me down, God was still on the throne. He remembered what I had done and what I hoped to do to honor Him.

Our “encounter” came in wintertime. I don't recall seeing much of her the rest of the school year. But that verse she shared kept coming to mind as I struggled through reading lists and piles of assignments, wrote my graduate thesis, and sent out resumes that brought disappointing “thanks, but no thanks.” And finally, just three days before I had to vacate college housing with nowhere to go, I got a phone call from a prominent editor offering a job I'd thought impossible to land--along with the editor's plan for my temporary housing.

God had not forgotten me. Hebrews 6:10, come true. Shared in a booth at a campus coffee shop by His unexpected messenger.