Confused. Grieving. Searching.
That’s how Brittani Bradford, a 22-year-old college student, felt entering her third semester as a photography major at Luzerne County Community College.
Sometimes she’d try talking to God, but wondered why He would listen.
Then she started hanging out with a friend from class, a religious person who seemed to have a positive attitude and offered decent answers to her questions. To her surprise, this new friend didn’t run away the next time she saw her, and eventually invited her to a Christian concert at the nearby Cross Creek Community Church.
Although she’d heard of Leeland, the band that would be playing, and liked their music, she didn’t want to go, and began looking for an excuse not to.
The date of the concert was November 7, the same day that would have been her Aunt Vicki’s 38th birthday, had she not died a few years before. Still trying to deal with her Aunt’s death, Brittani didn’t know where to turn.
“Of anybody in the world, why her?” she wondered.
Since a church seemed to be a logical place to deal with grief, and since she was unable to come up with a valid excuse not to, she went. She figured it would be filled with lame, bogus-sounding preaching.
“And it kind of was,” she said.
But then Leeland Mooring, lead singer of the band, said something that caught her attention. He talked about what it means to be a “new creation,” a concept found in the Bible in II Corinthians 5:17. He talked about something she longed for: starting over.
It was then she decided she wanted Jesus in her life.
“Some people would say you could do that on your own,” she said, “but I truly believe you can’t…without God in your life.”
Today, Brittani is a new creation.
Her favorite Bible verse is II Corinthians 5:17, which says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he [or she] is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” (English Standard Version)
She’s the first to admit that she’s not perfect. She’s still growing. Recognizing Jesus in her life is still new to her, and her life wasn’t automatically fixed and put into order when she came to God.
But she knows He’s there. She knows He’s listening. No matter what.
And she wants people who are in the same spot she was before all of this to know one thing:
