"God will not be in the place that is the most comfortable or
formal, but rather with the most marginalized and forgotten.
There you will find God." -Packard Rozzi
Growing up in a predominately white, suburban, middle-class town, not having left the country until you were 18 does not bode well to having an expansive worldview. There is nothing wrong with this life, but it left me with an apathetic view of the extremely complex world that we live in today.
When I chose not to stay close to home for college, I intentionally did so in order to open my eyes, even ever so slightly, to the rest of the world. Now moving from Indianapolis to Chicago is not a large jump, but it was a first step to expanding my worldview to live a more compassionate life.
Now up until that point, my social bubble included the people that looked like me, talked like me, and thought like me. This does not foster the challenging conversations, personal reflection, and change that is required to live a compassionate life to those around you. Although I learned many things from my experiences abroad, I know that I do not have to travel so far to expand my worldview.
In reflection, God will not be in the place that is the most comfortable or formal; but with the most marginalized and forgotten, you will find God. I would not have understood this if I had not burst my social and protective bubble.
Packard Rozzi is an Economics and Spanish double major with a Math minor at Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL. He visited four countries (Netherlands, Czech Republic, Spain, Portugal) as a part of Youth Hostel Ministries in 2019 when he also hiked the 180-mile (300 km) trek of Spain’s Camino de Santiago over two weeks. In the fall of that year, he lived in Sevilla, Spain as part of a semester abroad program through Wheaton College.
