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Moments before, noise filled the ship. Now silence. With TVs, phones, and conversations hushed, the ship mirrored the stillness of the sea. Busyness would return, but during the two-minute call to prayer, Chaplain Wayne MacRae ’80 held the attention of the Navy recruits. For 29 years Wayne has been battling for the souls of Navy men and women.

Growing up Hmong, Grace Vang often felt excluded by her classmates in public school. When she arrived at Moody Bible Institute, she felt uncomfortable mentioning her Hmong background, worrying that her classmates would also reject her. Instead, students and professors treated her with respect, and some took a genuine interest in her heritage.

When Gerald Edmonds was considering college, his mom, who had taken correspondence courses from Moody Bible Institute, told him, “Just go to Moody for one year. That’s all I’m asking you to do.” He honored his mom’s request and ended up earning his Bachelor of Music in 1957 and coming back years later as a music professor. “How smart she was,” he recalled at the award presentation.

Tending to goats and sheep certainly seems like an unlikely pursuit for Caleb Fetterhoff ’11. Musically gifted, he studied piano and voice and traveled with a gospel choir for two years before attending Moody. Yet even as he planned to pursue fame in a music career, he was drawn—theoretically—to the idea of shepherding.

We were sitting in the Wolf and Kettle Coffeehouse, with our professor holding court around a table of Moody students. “Like a blind man groping his way in a room in which the furniture is not where he expects it to be, you will always grope for life unless you approach it through Christ’s death.”

During our current season of coronavirus lockdown, as life and death continue to dominate public conversation, the importance of that lesson has reasserted itself.