For Sugi Kim, the day Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus is more than a once-a-year holiday.
“It’s not just Easter,” the University public relations and advertising junior said. “Every single day I am redeemed.”
Kim shared his Christian testimony at an on-campus Good Friday service that ALIVE!, a student ministry at the University, sponsored. It was one of several Easter-related ceremonies in the campus area over the past week.
Kim told the student audience how he went through his teenage years trying to fill an empty void in his life.
Alcohol, drugs, even becoming a busy student did not fulfill him, he said. He eventually became anorexic and lost 40 pounds in three weeks.
Depressed and alone one Thursday night in his dorm room in Wisconsin, where he formerly attended school, Kim said he decided to commit suicide. That night an unexpected call and then visit from a Christian friend in Minnesota intervened.
Kim said he surrendered to God a short time later. He had come to comprehend why Jesus was crucified, he said after Friday’s service.
“He wanted to go through all that to save me,” he said.
On Good Friday, Christians commemorated the day Jesus died, which Lorna Johnson, Alpha Omega adviser, a Christian student organization, said paid for mankind’s sins.
She said his resurrection is the premise of the Christian faith.
“When he rose up, the bondage of death was broken,” Johnson told the worshippers in the Mayo Auditorium. “If there is no resurrected Jesus, there is no Christianity.”
The resurrection is what Chet Hsiao, a first-year chemistry student, said gives him hope.
“We all die, but he is the only one who can conquer death,” Hsiao said after the Friday service. “If he can conquer death, he’s God and can conquer anything in my life.”
On Easter Sunday, University students and others gathered at the packed Grace University Lutheran Church to celebrate the day Christ rose from the dead.
“The tomb is empty,” Dan Garnaas announced, referring to the place where Christ was buried. “The abyss of God’s love is deeper than the abyss of death.”
At the Easter service, Rolf Johnson, a University student and a lifelong member of Grace University Lutheran Church, estimated about half of the students were not regulars.
“It’s good that we’re here on campus so they have someplace close to go to,” he said.