Two roads diverged in high school.

A pious fad in my Evangelical High School was the “life verse,” a Bible verse or two that particularly guided your life.

One of my classmates, from a a notable family, picked II Timothy 1:7:

For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.

He became a doer: M.D., head of a large and renowned clinic in his specialty, med school professor, multiple-term Board member of a major Evangelical liberal arts college and more.

I picked Ephesians 3:17:

… that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fulness of God.

I spent the next three decades longing to know the love of Christ that way, and with a low-level ache about worship that was unworthy of God or wasn’t worship at all. Then I became Orthodox. (I also had a sufficiently rewarding career.)

I wouldn’t trade places with my classmate if I could.