Two claw-like hands grasp my arm tightly, maybe because she’s unable to let go, or maybe because she’s afraid that she’s going to fall over as soon as she attempts to stand up. Her shriveled face is gaunt, with a vacant expression, while her body is stiff and permanently bent.

As I look at this woman, my mind automatically goes back to what she must have been before…before her mind left, before her body was wasted and crippled, before she was reduced to a helpless invalid with a child-like mind.

I have never seen her when she was other than what she is now—a shriveled, stiff old woman incapacitated by an invisible disease that slowly eats away at her mind and daily lessens her physical capabilities. But there were those who knew her then—when she was a capable doctor who organized departments, mobilized teams, ran her home, and raised her family.

Is she really the same person? I wonder, smoothing her hair out of her eyes and gazing thoughtfully at the gaunt, vacant face. What makes a person a person? If we become severely ravaged by disease…if our mind is gone…do we cease to be—essentially—who we once were?

In caring for this woman, there are many questions that have been raised in my mind. What is it to love someone forever, for better or for worse? This is a question that I often ask myself as I see her husband’s frustration with her. It saddens me that he seems to blame her for her current state—that he’s passively aggressive, or even openly aggressive, in the way that he responds to her increasing physical needs.

Could I do any better? I wonder quietly. Am I selfless enough to serve someone like this year after year without recognition or prospect of relief? Maybe not.

Is it ever right to starve yourself to death to avoid being a burden on someone else like this? Is this what old age is really about—being helpless, incompetent, dependent…to be a shadow of what you were, to be out of your mind, to waste away gradually and exist as a pitiable wreck? Why do I dread that? Are dependency and helplessness the worst things possible? When someone is in this state, is God using the condition to sanctify them, or to build character in others? When two people vow to each other to stay together for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, until death separates them…does that mean that you fight to keep your spouse’s body alive long after the mind has gone? What makes the person who they are? How do you practically cope with being married to someone who is nothing like the person that you married?

All of these are things that I wonder…and sometimes the questions themselves frighten me, because I can’t always answer them. But in caring for this elderly man and his ailing wife, these are, nevertheless, questions which cross my mind...

It’s an overcast, cold, windy afternoon, and the sidewalks of Liberty University are bustling with thousands of students, most of whom are clearly absorbed in their own little world.

Yes, I confess—I watch them. It’s fascinating to me to observe the ways that students interact—or don’t interact—as they jostle through their daily routines. Often times, they’re elbow-to-elbow with hundreds of other men and women just like themselves…men and women whose names they don’t know and whose faces they probably don’t even recognize—because sadly, college campuses are home to some of the most sobering incongruities of our generation. College students are daily demonstrating the fact that it is entirely possible—maybe even probable—to live in close physical proximity to thousands of other individuals who are in approximately our same stage of life…and yet be incredibly isolated—almost as completely alone as Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, the sole human occupant of a lonely island, whose isolated stretches he wandered alone for years.

As college students, we spend prodigious amounts of time talking—moving our mouths—and very little time communicating. We long to be heard—and yet we rarely take time to truly listen and ask thoughtful questions. We yearn to be considered intelligent, significant, sophisticated, mature, and respectable—and yet we feed our minds with trivialities, mediocrities, and frivolities, and are completely oblivious to the fact that what comes out in our behavior and our words is a reflection of what we put into our brains in the first place.

We are eager to find people we can follow—people who will lead—because we ourselves lack direction. We want others to make all or most of the important decisions in life for us—because we are mortally terrified of failing…of messing up…or—horrors!—of having to reap the consequences of our own actions. We desperately seek for intimacy—for that magical someone who will love us unconditionally—and yet we fail to understand that we ourselves lack the capacity and the maturity to love in the ways that we demand others should love us.

We point angry fingers at the Church, and accuse her of frightful shortcomings and egregious moral failures—and yet we are incognizant of the inconsistencies and shortcomings in our own spiritual lives…and oblivious to the fact that we ARE the church…ignorant of the reality that truth must be lived honestly before it can be spoken powerfully.

Does it frustrate me to witness this on a daily basis? Sometimes. Does it hurt to see humanity wrestle—and often fail—in their struggle to begin to understand what it means to live in community—to live fully, and joyfully, and righteously, and well? Yes. But that’s probably the wrong question.

Maybe what I really need to be asking is, what part do I play in all of this? Am I part of the problem or part of the solution? And what does it look like to be a part of the solution?

It costs us nothing to point fingers. It solves nothing either.

But what would happen if we talked less…listened more…read more…thought more…asked more questions…realized that it’s ok to mess up as long as we’re willing to get up and try again?

I guess the only person that can really answer that for me is…me. And the only person who can really answer that question for you is...you. But I’m willing to venture a guess that when we make the decision to live as we would have others to live around us…life looks a lot different, both inside and out.

Are we willing to be the change? To live the difference?