“Every moment of life is a statement to God of what you think of Him.” Discomfort rippled through the crowd of 200 teenagers stacked in Calvin College’s Gezon Auditorium. Shoulders twitched, elbows nudged, and we waited expectantly for Pastor Rutledge Etheridge to clarify—to tell us he meant every moment of personal devotions, or every moment of prayer, or every moment of the Reformed Presbyterian International Conference. Instead, he repeated the phrase: Every moment of life is a statement to God of what you think of Him.

This was the first lecture of the teen program of the 2008 RP International Conference, and it set the pace for the rest of the lectures. Over the course of the week, we were challenged, encouraged, challenged, informed, and challenged.

Our mornings consisted of a lecture from Rut Etheridge on meeting Christ in life, and a presentation from someone else: Matt Filbert gave a presentation on the Short-Term Missions program; Ken A. Smith spoke to us about making college decisions; a few people gave testimonies. Afterwards, we were given time to discuss with one another, and to ask questions of our counselors, or, if the counselors were unable to answer them, to ask questions of the speakers themselves.

Of course, the conference wasn’t all lectures. There were games of pick-up soccer, signs and ping pong in the basement, and jam sessions involving pianos, guitars, harmonica, and viola. There were activities with Geneva College, and the whirlwind of preparation and playing that was the chamber concert. Still, with our days bracketed by teaching in the morning and devotions at night, our conversation day-to-day was full of what we’d been learning.

As we settled into the auditorium on Wednesday, there was a certain atmosphere of anticipation. The topic for that morning was meeting Christ in suffering—a topic of which most Christians are a little scared. It’s easiest to assure one another that God is sovereign and leave it at that.

But we weren’t allowed to just leave it at that. Before Pastor Etheridge’s talk, Calvin Troup came up to give his testimony. First, he told us to write the names of five of our closest friends, and then to write down what we thought the next 10 years would look like if God was faithful to us. Next, he told us his testimony. When he was a little older than we are, two of his best friends were killed in a car accident that nearly claimed his own life. In that, Mr. Troup told us, God was faithful to him and to his friends. His point was that we cannot know what God’s faithfulness will look like, but we can be assured that He will be faithful.

Then Rut Etheridge came up and began to talk about Job.

He didn’t start by talking about everything Job lost. He started by reading Job 19:25-27: “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at last He shall stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom my eyes shall see, and not another.” He went on to tell the whole story of Job, pointing out that when Job worshiped God in his grief, he was still grieving. God does not require us to pretend suffering doesn’t hurt. Christ understands all the suffering of the world, and Christ suffered in that suffering. He didn’t grin and bear the cross, but cried out in His anguish to the Lord.

After that lecture, we were very quiet. And then we were very talkative, in our discussion groups and in evening devotions. That night, my devotions group talked for over an hour; after our counselor decided it really was time to go to our rooms, three of us stayed up until 2:30 am, talking and praying with one another.

That evening, I was struck by the blessing that is Christian friendship. There we were, three girls who had met each other not even a week before, sharing our struggles with one another. Three girls, demonstrating the greatest love for one another that we possibly could, praying for each other. Three girls, from different parts of the country, somehow linked together in a room in Michigan, understanding in a powerful way our tie to one another in Christ.

On the last night of the conference, I made this observation in my journal: “In my flesh, I shall see God. This is my hope, this is my prayer, for…all the sisters and brothers in Christ, whom I love so dearly. This is why I do not—why I cannot—fear death: because after my skin has been destroyed, in my flesh I shall know in the truest sense that my Redeemer lives.”

We can be sure that God will be faithful to His people in the next four years. Maybe this means all of the same 1,600 of us will be back at Calvin College in 2012; more likely, it means some of us will not be there. What it certainly means is that whether we see each other in four years, or whether we do not see each other again on this earth, we can be assured that we will share every moment of eternity with one another in perfect communion with our Lord.

—Stephanie Adjemian

senior, Boston Trinity Academy; member, Cambridge, Mass., RPC