More Believable and More Beautiful

It seems twas, but a fortnight ago, I was frolicking on the luscious, green rolling hills of western Pennsylvania, attending my beloved alma mater, Grove City College. As a proud Tennessean (I was born and raised in Memphis), in my wildest dreams, I never imagined I would go to a school further north than Tennessee. As a matter of fact, I had everything in order to follow in the footsteps of my forefathers for the past three generations and become a fourth-generation Auburn graduate. However, our Great and Good God, whose ways and thoughts are much higher than our own (Is. 55:8-9), had other plans. Rather than leading me to a university where I could continue making a name for the Campbell Clan from which I hail, God was leading and guiding me for His namesake (Ps. 31:3).

The LORD used the Grove City College community to transform my life and walk with Jesus utterly. As a small Christian college, I often felt like I was back at summer camp, with the only difference being I was spending late nights in the library cramming for exams. I had never before experienced such a flourishing community of young believers. To many of us students, it was a small foretaste of what Heaven would be like when all people and nations come together to worship, love, and enjoy the King! The top answer students give for why they love Grove City is the community. But it wasn’t until my senior year that I could sufficiently articulate why. A mentor casually threw this quote into one of our conversations: the communion of saints makes Jesus more believable and more beautiful.

The Grove City community is one composed of saints — people who have repented and believed in Jesus and have been given the right to become a child of God (John 1:12). In Christ, we are no longer children of wrath (Eph. 2:3) who identify with their sin. Instead, we are “fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God” (Eph. 2:19). We are a people who were dead in our sins until made alive together with Christ (Eph. 2:5)! 

This communion of saints at Grove made Jesus more believable and more beautiful to me. O praise God for the good gift of living in unity with other brothers and sisters in Christ and how we can see Jesus in and through his body, the Church! 

Now, you may be asking, why have I spent most of my blog post talking about Grove City College instead of Nashville? Well, I wanted to contextualize my perspective and specifically this quote. I believe my experience so far in the Nashville Fellows Program can also be aptly described as Jesus being made more believable and more beautiful by the communion of saints in the program, our churches, our host homes, our classes, our offices, and elsewhere. 

I thank and praise God daily for the gift of being a part of His family and, more specifically, a part of His Nashvillian family. Since arriving in the 615, I have come to enjoy more fully the eternal life that John the Baptist speaks of — “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent,” (John 17:3). Let us not just enjoy this blessed communion of saints in Nashville, but let us answer the call and continue to love and sing and wonder so that all those around us would come to see Jesus as more believable and more beautiful!!

Ari Campbell, Class 12
Hometown: Memphis, TN
Graduate of Grove City College, PA