When You’re Afraid You Don’t Matter

When I was a freshman in college, there were small vases of flowers on every one of the hundreds of tables in our Dining Commons. One particular guys’ floor enjoyed finding couples on a lunch date and casually placing dozens of the vases, one by one, on the table between them before walking away, whistling cheerfully.

Besides that little prank, I didn’t see much purpose behind the flowers. When I asked why they were changed out every week, the upperclassmen told me a Taylor University alumni couple had left a fund in their will that specified a certain amount of money to be used exclusively for flowers in the dining hall.

Not financial aid. Not a building fund. Not artwork or landscaping or some other campus feature with a gold plaque bearing their names and a message to be remembered by.

Nineteen-year-old Amy was not impressed. While I thought the…