Refresh: There really is a tree.

Whether you serve in ministry or have a secular job where your everyday work is a form of ministry, we can all become discouraged at some point. It could be a pastorate or mission field where it’s difficult to find anyone open to Christ. It may be a career or project that remains incomplete or just never turns out right.

Many of us, day to day, are waging the battles not only of flesh and blood but also against the pressures of time, the opinions of people, or the limits of human ability in a fallen world. We wonder how much of what we do will last or make any difference. Often, we fight competing desires, and we wonder why we have to deal with circumstances that come up rather than doing what we think will make a difference for God.

I recently heard someone share a story about a moment of doubt for J.R.R. Tolkien as he was writing his famous Lord of the Rings series. Tolkien had undertaken a monumental task, albeit with great intentions — he hoped his tale would tell the story of his God in a way that would reveal truth to many people who wouldn’t otherwise consider the message.

But Tolkien was struggling to get the work done, and as time and the bombings of Britain in World War II closed in, he fell into despair, wondering if he would finish or if all would go to waste.

Tolkien took a break in that darkness and wrote a short story about a character called Niggle. Much like Tolkien, Niggle had embarked on a project: a painting of a beautiful landscape that was taking him a long time to complete. As he got older, though, Niggle feared he wouldn’t finish the painting before he died.

Niggle had tried to be diligent, but other people had needed his help. Rather than spending his time devoted to the painting he thought had so much worth and beauty, Niggle was regularly distracted by the everyday needs of people around him. His schedule was not his own, and his days were sidetracked by giving others a hand. He ended up dying with the painting only partially finished. Of all his attempts, just one perfect, intricate leaf survived from the tree at the center of what was to be a beautiful work of art.

The worries of Niggle’s life, though, where he spent so much time concerned that his work would not be finished, vanished when he arrived in Heaven. There before him was his painting — his complete tree. The time he had spent pursuing the calls for help that God put before him had turned into eternal reality, where the picture he could only imagine on earth turned into real, forever worth.

“There really is a tree,” the person said of the many visions and hopes we all have but fear will never see completion on this earth.

There really is a tree. There really is a hope — a God Who knows our hearts and motivations. While we often labor without knowing whether our work has impact, God promises something more. This God sees fruit where we see only planted seeds. This God smiles at results where we know only fleeting conversations. This God sees trees where we have only blank canvases.

“Do not tire in doing good” (Galatians 6:9).

Or, as I tell myself instead these days: There really is a tree.

Jen Slothower, Class of 2006, is the editor of The Victory Journal. She writes for the New England Sports Network in Boston.

From the Editor: Issue Six.

by Jen Slothower

Alumni Director Emeritus Wayne Lewis seems to think you all will enjoy getting a column from me, the editor, in every Victory Journal (and a photo of myself, at some point).

So here we go.

The reason I shied away from putting my name all over this magazine in the past is mostly that I think my part shouldn’t matter. If you are reading and enjoying what we are sending you, you’ll be reading and enjoying it, and the person putting it together is of no consequence. (And if the opposite is true, then we just have to work harder.) But as we change this Victory Journal and aim to make it something that not only blesses the alumni population but also accurately reflects you, my role in the Victory Journal’s development might be more important than I realized.

First, understand that I am not a staff member at Word of Life. While I am an alumnus, I live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, down near Memorial Drive, where you can look across the Charles River black like glass and see Boston, a city that has so much hope, promise, and intellect but is really as lost as this world has ever been. I have degrees in journalism and have done everything from designing the front page of a newspaper each night to covering the Celtics at the Garden to editing Sunday School lessons for teenagers. Right now, I am a diehard Yankees fan who writes baseball, football, basketball, and hockey stories for a Boston-based national sports website.

So, why am I editing the Victory Journal?

Well, why not? Think about this: When has the Bible Institute ever been about spitting out cookie-cutter Christians? Has Word of Life’s goal ever been to create a template of what every graduate should look like? When you devote a program to pushing its students deeper and deeper inside the Word, should you be surprised when some of them find Jesus Christ in the deepest of ways and then want to take Him to places where no one speaks His name, from Fenway Park to Boylston Street to Harvard Square?

My professional life right now consists of me keeping the jobs I can get as journalism melts around me. But my personal life is exactly what I have prayed it will be since I first discovered the idea of a life consumed by God (Colossians 3) at the Bible Institute. I now aim to walk with God, and then to carry the only true hope I’ve ever found to the people I see in everyday life.

The Bible Institute is billed as “a great place to start.” And it is just that — a start. For all that people love about their Bible Institute years and what happened there, the true glory belongs to the years after, and how God takes a short time of immersive Bible training and turns it into incredible changed lives all over the world.

I live in Cambridge. You live in Lynchburg, Virginia; Hudson, Florida; Chicago; California; Brazil. I write sports. You sell insurance and help in your youth group. You teach and volunteer. You raise your kids or devote your life to missions.

I rarely set foot on a Bible Institute campus, but I know why God has me using my journalism experience to make this magazine happen. The Bible Institute isn’t just about Open Air Evangelism, Snow Camp, and supervising the bakery at the Word of Life Inn during the summer. It’s about what happens when an intense year becomes a life of knowing God and spreading His Truth.

The message of the Bible Institute, of Word of Life, of Jesus Christ, is spread throughout the world in so many ways by those who are the alumni of the Word of Life Bible Institute.

We want to make the Victory Journal something that ministers to those people — that tells their stories. I hope you’re encouraged to know a Bible Institute graduate is bumbling her way around Boston, sharing Jesus, and I want to be encouraged by hearing what you are doing now. We want the Victory Journal to be a continuing dialogue of what we learned at the Bible Institute but also a place to share with each other what God has done since then.

So, send us your stories. Share your memories. Tell us what you like and don’t like about the Victory Journal (or our online blog), and how it could be better for you.

This isn’t about the Bible Institute or Word of Life — it’s about how God changes lives through the Bible Institute and Word of Life, and that means we want to hear from you.

We have big plans for the Victory Journal. We’ve come a long way, but we’re still trying to expand and do a better job of serving you. Please send us your ideas and stories via alumni@wol.org, mikebush@wol.org, waynel@wol.org or jenslothower@wol.org. We will keep you updated on what we’re doing within these pages and online.

And you know, this column might not be such a bad idea if you send us plenty of your stories to talk about in each issue.