Comedian and talk show host Steve Harvey is paying it forward in a big way after he recently announced that he would be covering the college tuition of eight students attending his alma mater Kent State.
The “Original King of Comedy” released a statement on Monday that The Steve & Marjorie Harvey Foundation has worked with Kent State University to provide scholarships of about $23,000 for eight incoming freshmen. The students must maintain a 2.5 GPA for the scholarships to be renewed each semester.
The scholarships are in memory of Devin Moore, a Kent State student from Cleveland who died in 2017 while playing basketball at a university center, PageSix reports. The university also committed $10,000 to Kent State’s Men Empowerment Network, the outlet adds.
News of Harvey’s latest philanthropy comes after the recent cancellation of his daytime talk show “The Steve Harvey Show”. Bishop T. D. Jakes was his guest on his final show taping and left Harvey with some words that he recently shared on Instagram.
“There is no better guest to have today than the inspiring @bishopjakes. When I said I didn’t know what God had planned for me, Bishop Jakes shared his powerful message why I shouldn’t know.”
Jakes’ message was on the common mysteries in life.
“You’re not supposed to know [what’s going to happen],” Jakes told Harvey. “Life is a mystery. If you take away the mystery and everything was certain you wouldn’t need faith. So God often puts us in positions where we don’t know to destabilize us from thinking and relying too much on what we know.”
Jakes then used a workout analogy to make his point.
“Like a trainer who starts you out on a weight machine, and then he puts you on a bench and he gives you free weights because now it’s less stable,” he explained. “The less stable it is the more muscle you build. So the more unstable your life becomes the more you have to go inside yourself to stabilize yourself.”
“You’re strong enough to withstand instability,” added Jakes. “And if you knew everything, you’d have no room for faith, for discovery, for innovation. Because creativity comes in uncertainty.”
