Fallen Star

There's a special house at UCSD. It's not real, but only a piece of art that for all intent and purposes looks like a real house and it's furnished with all the trappings we expect in a home. However, this building hangs off the side of the engineering building on campus in plain sight of anyone who turns their eyes heavenward for even a brief moment.

It bears the name Fallen Star for significant reasons and there's a universality to its moniker. Physically the home is disorientating. Inside its walls our realty is made subjective, our point of view and everything we accept as true is shaken up for a few brief moment. We are forced to question all that we know to be true and truly view the world around us in a different way.

And thus, this physical manifestation becomes a perfect symbol for the reality that most every person goes through. In high school when we're maturing and trying to figure out who we are amidst waves of peer pressure. Starting off college, entering a foreign environment with new challenges, not knowing what to expect and not knowing where we'll be. Leaving college going off into the great unknown of the work force and continued life with other people.

And the beauty is that we are never actually there, because until the day that we die we will be sojourners in an unknown land. There's always a road to be traversed, new paths to be traveled into the unknown. Thus, the Fallen Star is always pertinent, because in some way shape or form we exist in the realm of the uncertain.

As we grow older we become less shaken and more comfortable, but in our youthfulness we can often get wade down by storm of doubt and anxiety. Our equilibrium is shifted and we are forced to question all that we once knew. But out of this difficulty comes great things that we could never expect, forcing us to shed our old skins and look at the world with new eyes.

While I look back at my four years of college I can see the cycles in my life more clearly. I can remember feeling like a Falling Star when I first got to this university that I felt unfit for. This wasn't the school for me. I was waiting for God to show me why he even placed me here. Sure enough, over months and quarters and years he has. Refining me, humbling me, forcing me to step out in faith and ultimately causing me to become more content in him -- through the joys and the trials.

Now this chapter is coming to a close and I look back rather wistfully, but I have more contentment and hope than regret, because I saw God do big things in my life and I know he will continue doing just the same. So perhaps I am once again leaving UCSD a Fallen Star, transplanted and turned upside down, but then again that's what God did with the entire paradigm of civilization. Through the death of his Son Jesus Christ he turned the world upside down and that means we live our lives not worrying about anything.

Because what's the bottom line? In our confusion, disorientation, backwardness, and upside down state, our God is right side up, perfectly all knowing and sovereign over all of us. He's got the stars in his hands and we can be totally content in the fact that he will continue a good work in us -- even in our fallen state.