This case provides a teachable moment for prospective students and their parents as they consider enrolling at a public educational institution in a day and age where Christian beliefs are more counter-cultural than ever.

Maggie DeJong, in her third year of a master’s program for art therapy counseling at Southern Illinois University (SIU), was shocked recently to receive official emails from the school’s administration ordering her to have “no contact” with three other graduate students in her program, either on or off campus.
What was this Christian student guilty of? What would prompt the university to issue the educational equivalent of a restraining order against her?
According to her attorneys with Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the only thing DeJong was told in emails from the university is that “upon information and belief that interactions between yourself [and the other students] would not be welcome or appropriate at this time.”
DeJong was given no prior notice of the complaints against her nor was she given an opportunity to defend herself against whatever accusations have been lodged against her.
In an interview with The Daily Citizen, Tyson Langhofer, ADF Senior Counsel and Director of the Center for Academic Freedom, told us that Maggie has been singled out at times by her professors and fellow students for criticism of her Christian beliefs, even telling her that her beliefs are wrong, insensitive and contrary to the values of the program in which she is enrolled.
For example, Langhofer said, Maggie at one point was texting back and forth with another student who asked her about her beliefs. Maggie informed her that her personal beliefs are grounded in objective truth by the gospel of Jesus Christ. The conversation was friendly and conversational. Yet Maggie’s exact text ended up on a piece of art in a common area at the school entitled “The crushing weight of micro-aggressions.”
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The Islamic winners took over the once magical city of Constantine and renamed it Istanbul. It had been the home of the renowned Santa Sophia, the largest Christian church in the world for over 900 years. Almost immediately, this “Church of the Holy Wisdom” was converted into the then largest mosque in the Islamic world, with minarets to follow.

When Constantinople finally fell to the Ottomans on Tuesday, May 29, 1453, the Byzantine Empire and its capital had survived for 1,000 years beyond the fall of the Western Empire at Rome.
Always outnumbered in a sea of enemies, the Byzantines’ survival had depended on its realist diplomacy of dividing its enemies, avoiding military quagmires, and ensuring constant deterrence.
Generations of self-sacrifice ensured ample investment for infrastructure. Each generation inherited and improved on singular aqueducts and cisterns, sewer systems, and the most complex and formidable city fortifications in the world.
Brilliant scientific advancement and engineering gave the empire advantages like swift galleys and flame throwers—an ancient precursor to napalm.
The law reigned supreme for nearly a millennium after the emperor Justinian codified a prior thousand years of Roman jurisprudence.
Yet this millennium-old crown jewel of the ancient world that once was home to 800,000 citizens had only 50,000 inhabitants left when it fell.
There were only 7,000 defenders on the walls to hold back a huge Turkish army of over 150,000 attackers.
The Islamic winners took over the once magical city of Constantine and renamed it Istanbul. It had been the home of the renowned Santa Sophia, the largest Christian church in the world for over 900 years. Almost immediately, this “Church of the Holy Wisdom” was converted into the then largest mosque in the Islamic world, with minarets to follow.
So what happened to the once indomitable city fortress and its empire?
Christendom had cannibalized itself. Western Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy fought endlessly. Westerners often hated each other more than they did their common enemy.
In the final days of Constantinople, almost no help was sent from Western Europe to the besieged city.
In fact, 250 years earlier, the Western Franks of the Fourth Crusade had detoured from the Holy Land to storm the supposedly allied Christian City of Constantinople.
Then they ransacked the city and hijacked the Byzantine Empire for a half-century. Constantinople never quite recovered.
The 14th-century Black Plague killed tens of thousands of Byzantines and scared thousands more into moving out of the cramped city.
But the aging and dying empire battled more than the challenges of internal divisions, or an unforeseen but deadly pandemic and the empire’s disastrous responses to it.
The last generations of Byzantines had inherited a global reputation and standard of living that they themselves no longer earned.
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Jesus invites those who are weary, burdened, and heavy laden to savor the rest he offers (Matthew 11:28-30). Relief from the yoke of the law and from our toilsome labors. Rest for the soul. The restoration of God with his children, to abide together in his rest for all eternity. Right now, we live on in a sin-stricken world. But when Christ returns, God will dwell among us.

At the end of his life, my friend David leaned into Christ’s promise of rest. The hope he drew from that promise so comforted him that he spent his last moments witnessing to others.
He’d endured a long, arduous struggle with end-stage emphysema. For months he ricocheted back and forth between the hospital and rehab, and wrestled with fear, doubt, and exhaustion as the simple act of breathing became a burden. “I’m so tired,” he would say, between gasps of air. “I just wish I knew what God is doing.”
Yet even when David could barely breathe, he felt an urgency to share the hope and peace he gleaned from the gospel, so he diligently planned a funeral that would offer Christian hope to all in attendance. When my kids and I visited him the day before he died, we found him sitting at a table with his laptop open to a letter he wanted read during the service. He passed into Jesus’s arms a little over 24 hours later.
I was privileged to read the passages he chose for his funeral, and tears sprang to my eyes when I saw his most cherished verse among them. It was a verse that had offered him a cool cup of water in arid times, and he now ensured that it would be offered to the gathered mourners so that they too might find comfort: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:28–29).
Seeking a Hidden Rest
In our world that prizes productivity over stillness, rest seems an alluring but ever-elusive gift. A startling number of Americans struggle with sleep deprivation, and more than half of American employees report symptoms of workplace burnout.
The tourism industry in the United States generates over one trillion dollars in revenue each year, as we flee our hometowns with the hope that ocean breezes, mountain air, or a change in scenery might finally calm our frayed nerves. Inevitably, when the vacation weeks fly by, and we return home sunburned, weary, and deflated, we wonder how the refreshment we sought has escaped us yet again. While our Lord calls us to “be still” and know he is God (Psalm 46:10), we never seem to find the time.
Meanwhile, the travails of life exhaust us. Businesses fail. Disasters strike. Loved ones fall ill, and some die. Our bodies wither and break, and our hopes along with them. Pain and loneliness, grief and worry weigh down our souls, and we find ourselves broken, parched, exhausted, and yearning for stillness. For relief. For rest — that cool cup of water that never seems to come.
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