By Frances George
It’s Homecoming week at Baylor. Sic ’em Bears!
And although I did not receive my undergraduate degree from Baylor, I am looking forward to Homecoming as if I had run the Line with my very own freshman class back in the day! I’m packing my suitcase, pulling out my Dapper Bear green and gold scarf, securing my BU luggage tags on my carry-on, and making sure I have my “Baylor Kappa Mom” big button to wear on Saturday! I’m getting excited about Torchy’s, ready to find a new food truck at the Pep Rally on Friday night, and telling parents of freshman about shopping at Spice and eating at Ninfa’s!
I have two daughters with three Baylor degrees between them as of 2020 and so I make my way down to Waco several times a year. I look forward to driving onto campus from I-35… always under some sort of construction I have learned from years of driving in from DFW… but no matter! When I see McLane stadium on the left and the beautiful suspension bridge ahead, the Clifton Robinson Tower on the right and the Alico building downtown in the cityscape skyline, I feel like I’m home even though I am 1,200 miles away from my house! Exit 335- C here I come! This place called “Baylor.”
How can that be? My college campus in Chapel Hill, North Carolina is beautiful and storied, full of ivy covered buildings and a college- centered downtown and fun football Saturdays. It holds many memories, to be sure. It is the place where I became a follower of Christ.
But there is this place called “Baylor”… and it is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.
Just last week our younger daughter was getting ready to go on a date with a young man she is just beginning to know. They serve together in Vertical, the campus ministry. As she was getting ready and as you might imagine, a little nervous, she texted me later, after the date and said, “Mom, while I was getting ready, I was reading and praying Hebrews 3 and I surrendered the night to God. We had a blast!” What college develops and encourages that kind of thinking among its students, students who absolutely know how to have great time but also know how to keep their eyes on Christ? This place called “Baylor.”
Last Monday, we hosted twenty parents of current students in our home in Raleigh, North Carolina for a NC Baylor Nation Family Dinner and Prayer time. The scheduled end time was 8:30. The last guest left at 10:15! But that’s what family does. We lingered over coffee and dessert and prayed for our children by name, from freshmen to seniors. At one point, several parents said, “This night was like a Thanksgiving dinner with family.” What college has regularly scheduled Parents in Prayer Dinners throughout the year across the country praying for students by name? This place called “Baylor.”
Later in the week, I was reading an Oswald Chambers devotion from the early twentieth century and as I read, I thought, “This could be said of Baylor today, one hundred years later!” “I have chosen you.” Keep that note of greatness in your creed. Here in this college, God is at work, bending, breaking, moulding, doing just as He chooses. Why He is doing it? He is doing it for one purpose only – that He may be able to say, “This is My man, My woman.” This is true at this place called “Baylor.”
As I walk through the campus and meet new students with each visit to Baylor, I see malleable young men and women, eager to know God’s best for them academically, socially and spiritually. I see it in the way they carry themselves on campus. I see it in the way they honor their campus and its heritage and history. I see it in the way they do all things with excellence. I see it on Sunday mornings when I worship with them when I could return to my home state and my home church but I’d rather be here with the students and catch a glimpse into the future of what God is doing with the next generation. In these students I see great hope. I see it at this place called “Baylor.”
There may be a college campus that has more history or more ivy-covered buildings, but when you look for the light, the illumination emanating from the institution, what do you see? Increasingly so at many colleges and universities, there may be “lovely” but there is very little “light.”
Recently I heard an illustration that makes my point: You may have the best logs for a fire, arranged in a most lovely and perfect manner that will give the most light and yet, if you never light the fire, all of the perfection of the logs and their arrangement is for naught. At Baylor, not only are the “logs” arranged in a most beautiful manner, from Fountain Mall, to the statue of the Immortal 10, to the flowering gardens in front of Pat Neff, and of course the Baylor Bookstore (the most beautiful campus bookstore in the country!) but the logs have actually been lit by Baylor’s forefathers and founders, and the fire continues burn brightly by our current faculty and staff, as they fan the flame, giving light to our students. This is a rare find at a top tier university today. But it is commonplace… at this place called “Baylor.”
So as you pack your bags and plan your visit to Baylor for Homecoming where you’ll see (and feel the heat from!) the greatest bonfire you’ll ever witness, as you pack that sweater to stand on the sidewalk early Saturday morning with hundreds and hundreds of students, faculty, families, and friends and watch the largest and longest continually running Homecoming parade in the nation with floats that have been designed for months and built by students, as you get ready to watch the freshman run the Baylor Line in McLane on Saturday and see 1000+ students spill onto the field in their yellow jerseys like yellow paint… as you do all of this and more, know that there is this place where hope resides, where students are of the highest caliber in character, where faculty and staff are intentionally pouring into our students to grow them into young men and women who will give light to the world because they know the Light of the world. As you do all of this, know that you are in a unique and wonderful place.
This place called “Baylor.”
And that name, in and of itself is, as I always say, the Baylor difference.