"I would beg God to let me go into full-time ministry. I wanted to be with Campus Crusade, but it was clear as day to me that he just kept saying no."
Ruth Okediji is a Professor at Harvard Law School and Co-Director of Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. An expert on the role of intellectual property in social and economic development, Professor Okediji has influenced government policies in sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, and South America. But God's call to be a world-class legal scholar was not her first choice. She wanted to be a missionary.
It's understandable.
Receiving Jesus
Okediji's parents had come to Christ through missionaries and she recalls accepting Christ when she was seven - the same year her family moved from Nigeria to Manhattan. "My mom introduced me to the good news that God loves me unconditionally and so sent His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to make a way for me to know Him and, thus, to live. Not only to live a full life on earth but to live eternally in Heaven-- a real place where God is," Okediji recalls.
"I still remember the scene vividly: I was sitting on a plastic-covered couch in our small two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan, thinking hard about what my mom was telling me. I prayed with her that night and believed that God had heard the simple words that I was a sinner who needed forgiveness and wanted to accept His provision of Jesus. He did hear me. And He hears me still."
As a teenager, Okediji made a commitment to live exactly as the Bible teaches. "Again, the day and place are vivid in my mind," she recalls. "I had just finished reading the autobiography of Karl Marx's daughter (I was the precocious child of a professor who had a huge home library!) and was thinking about the challenges of human nature and the limited life of the mind. Somehow, at 16 years old, I believed that there had to be more to knowing God. I was firmly unwilling to go through religious motions, to passively follow tradition, to simply exist in life with Christianity as yet just another 'accouterment.' In my mind, if God's Son died for me, there definitely had to be more to this life. I determined to read the Bible and to do the Bible. I set out to give my all to pursuing and proving this God I had intentionally and so audaciously embraced. Little did I know then that my heart had simply echoed the words of saints of old and many other witnesses today -- words captured in one of my favorite verses:
For my determined purpose is that I may know Him that I may progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him, perceiving and recognizing and understanding the wonders of His Person more strongly and more clearly, that I may in the same way come to know the power outflowing from His resurrection which it exerts over believers, and that I may so share His sufferings as to be continually transformed into His likeness, even to His death." (Philippians 3:10)"
Seeking the Lord's Will
Okediji graduated from high school three years early and moved back to Nigeria with her family, where she attended college. As an undergrad, she prayed intensely for God to reveal his call on her life. When she concluded (after much prayer) that her dream of going into full-time ministry wasn't God's call on her life, she was deeply disappointed.
As a Plan B, Okediji applied to several Ivy League universities. But being accepted into Harvard Law School - which would seem like a dream come true for many - was more of a "that's nice" for her. Initially, she deferred the offer, because she didn't have the money to go. But after more weeks of prayer, Okediji concluded that this was the wrong choice. She wrote back to Harvard, but heard nothing. Then, a few weeks before classes were due to start, she felt a strong confirmation from the Lord that she would go, and right away she got a letter back from Harvard with details for the start of term. The letter had an April postmark. But she hadn't received it until August. (You can read more of this remarkable story in Made to Count: Discovering what to do with your life.)
After graduating from Harvard Law School, Okediji taught at the University of Oklahoma and the University of Minnesota before returning to Harvard Law in 2017. Rather than feeling crushed by the fact that God didn't call her to be a missionary, Okediji now sees the university as her mission field. She has had countless opportunities to witness to students who have come to her office seeking advice.
Living for the Lord today
Professor Okediji graciously took time this week to send me her thoughts on living as a Christian now. I'm simply pasting her reflections, in the hope that you will be as encouraged by them as I have been.
"A relationship with the God of Heaven compels a life that is passionate, costly, joyful -- one that comes with a perplexing, awe-filled relationship with a holy, righteous, loving God. One of the most profound things to me is the fact that being a Christ-follower is an eternal calling by an eternal Being with whom I have an eternal relationship. I am not just living life, I am carrying His life in me; I am not just going to a place, I am going to be with Someone.
I love how the Psalmist describes Heaven as God's Throne -- the place where God is and where I am meant to be eventually. I think we often forget this reality. Even (or perhaps especially) in the best of times, earth and its conveniences and pleasures are but the most secondary of considerations. We are not meant to cling to the life we know, nor should our physical life --whatever the circumstances -- be our first or ultimate concern. Rather, seeking God first. What does He want to say and do in the midst of this particular storm? Because Jesus always had (and still has) an answer for and in every storm.
Challenges like COVID-19 jar us back to the reality that even as great as life can be, it is not greater than being with God. A challenge for which our sophisticated technologies have no immediate solution, for which our highly developed science must admit to ignorance, and for which our military might is irrelevant, is deeply frightening for many. Lawyers armed with the best arguments and proof cannot help. Overnight, all the things to which our culture most naturally turns in times of difficulty have disappeared. Making room for us to point to God. It is an unprecedented time to talk about my living faith. But I am fully confident that God is my Refuge, and underneath me are His everlasting arms. (Deuteronomy 33:27)
The reason COVID-19 (like other large scale challenges that may follow) so fiercely grips our attention is that the consequences are visible and often, they are immediate. We are inundated with news of its spread and its devastation daily. But there are things far more stubborn, more persistent and debilitating than COVID-19. There are the injustices and pain that pervade the fabric of our families, relationships and society. The attitudes, actions, and beliefs that maim us, weaken us, divide us, poison us, diminish us, and that ultimately kill the things most important for life.
These things share quite a few things in common with COVID-19: we often don't know when we have contracted them, how we infect others with them, and we so quickly discard our "protective" gear of forgiveness, faith, hope, trust, and grace.
In this season of difficulty for so many, I am grateful and, to be honest, joy-filled, to have many opportunities to serve others in need. At a Bible Study that I co-lead with my friend Professor Jack Goldsmith, we have been studying the New Testament book of James. For weeks we studied that we are told to "count it all joy" when we fall into difficult times (James 1:2) and that "faith without works is dead." (James 2:14). The test of what I learned has come in a far bigger way with our current national crises.
Encouragement has been a key part of my daily activities. As is asking hard questions of family and friends about what matters in life to them. Service to others is not charity, though that is important. At its heart, serving others is the means by which we imitate Christ. And if we are doing this in faith, the insuppressible joy of it will cause many to ask "tell me the reason for your hope." This is the end of all service -- to reflect and point to the greatest Servant of all.
I serve in praying for our leaders for wisdom. I serve in praying for healing for those who are sick. I serve by contributing materially to the physical needs around me. And I serve by sharing my faith in eternity. Because this is what we were created for.
I am deeply grateful to be reminded of why I am alive, and to renew my focus on the eternal calling that demands that serving others be what defines my life - in all circumstances; not just in a time of crisis."
Let's uphold Professor Okediji in our prayers as she both shares her faith and lives it out in scholarship and service of others. And let's live with the same joy-filled obedience she models, praying that it would cause many to ask us the reason for the hope that we have.
[Photo credit: The Harvard Magazine.]
