We never know how God will weave the threads of today.

Three years ago, my son began his freshman year at our state university, moving into an off-campus scholarship house with 15 others boys. His roommate turned out to be my friend’s son who had just transferred to the university.

“Let’s cook dinner for the boys,” she suggested.

This friend. She’s always been so purposeful, intentionally looking for ways to pour into others and connect with neighbors, friends, and her children. Knowing that home cooking is the way to every college boy’s heart, we quadrupled our favorite casseroles, loaded up our mini-vans, and headed to our alma mater to cook and serve dinner to these college students.

Our mission was simple: get to know our boys’ housemates and bless them with good food.

And so our tradition began. Each semester, we’d drive down and serve a buffet of our best home cookin’.

We gave warm hugs along with seconds and thirds. We learned names, talked majors, and heard about families back home. While some students drifted in from classes and out to meetings, most lingered long after dinner was cleaned up, sprawling on the mismatched couches and worn carpet to swap stories and play games.

Then came the unthinkable.

Just after the house closed up last summer and the boys had scattered to hometowns and summer jobs, a tragic accident took the life of a young housemate, Bryan. When fall rolled around, we wove in a new thread — we invited Bryan’s parents to join us for our home cookin’ nights.

In the wake of their own loss, Bryan’s parents reached out to his housemates and joined us.

You can imagine it’s terribly hard to love on some college kids while you’re nearly crippled from missing your own. But nervous anxiety for both boys and parents gave way to healing. With students crammed onto couches and perched around the room’s perimeter, Bryan’s parents opened up about the accident and their hope in Christ. In return, students unearthed stories of Bryan, filling in for his parents the memories missing from his year at college.

And then just days before Christmas break, more hard news came . My friend’s son, Daniel, had gone to the infirmary after feeling a lump and, after testing, was told he had Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. He would graduate and start chemo before his career.

Our own family had been walking the hard, after my husband passed away unexpectedly when my son, Nick, was 16.

We three moms came together again that spring to cook for the boys. Our simple mission to cook for some college boys had knit us together as we now encouraged each other in the hard.

Sometimes we ask what God is doing? Why all this suffering in one house of boys? All three living hard for the Lord.

I don’t think we yet know. Those threads are still being woven and we may not understand the whole masterpiece this side of life.

In the college world, where life can seem boundless but feel vacuous, perhaps these dinners are a window into life that is hard but full of hope. For we do not grieve as those having no hope. {see 1 Thessalonians 4:13}

It’s not just our shared hard that binds us together but our shared hope.

And the threads God is weaving today may be the community He uses tomorrow.

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