Tag: christian inspiration

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Reaching A New Audience

I’ve got some exciting news about DareGreatlyNow.com! A ministry partner has volunteered his services to make audio recordings of past blog entries, and the intent will be to make them available on the site for listening on the go!

I say “ministry partner,” but the truth is…he’s an ordinary guy who followed through on the Holy Spirit’s prompting to make use of his talents, time, and resources. He doesn’t represent a professional organization. He’s an example of what God can do with a willing heart. Thanks to his efforts, blog entries will start becoming available through a different medium, hopefully reaching a wider (or different) audience, spurring them on with the goal of encouraging others to step into the roles God made for them.

In all honesty, it’s probably going to be a long time before even a tenth of the blog’s past posts are available to listen to. Neither of us does this full time. We’re just guys who love God and said yes to different versions of a task He laid before us, and we do this on the side. The beauty of it, though, is that we’ve begun working a project that once didn’t exist, and years after it first started, there are hundreds of God-honoring posts that have collectively been read thousands of times across the globe.

Here’s where I’d love your input. In light of a limited capacity to produce audio files of past entries, I’d love to hear from you to help shape the prioritization going forward. Which past posts stand out in your mind as something that spurred you on, or as something you think others need to hear? Leave a comment or let me know at tim@daregreatlynow.com.

Big things that honor God and build His kingdom don’t usually start out big. They start with a single person being open to God’s leading. Later, other people bring reinforcements and additional depth to the project. What are you being led to do? What’s holding you back? Who will you be a ministry partner to?

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What do Freezing Temperatures and God’s Love Have in Common?

I’m guessing most of the people reading this at the end of January have recently been dealing with some very cold weather, along with some snow/ice. This past weekend there was an enormous storm that dropped snow, ice, or rain in something ridiculous like 40 states.

I’ll be honest with you, I was disappointed as the forecasted amount of snow kept dropping. At one point we were supposed to get 21 inches of it. As the models kept updating though, eventually we were projected to get less than half that.

Well, when you live in an area that’s not accustomed to more than a few inches of snow, and then you see warnings about nearly two feet of it, things start to get a little crazy. The snow wouldn’t be so bad, but then forecasts started talking about some ice mixing in. Cue the panic. Power outages mixed with some of the coldest temperatures in several years spells trouble.

I started making preparations here at home. I have electric heat, so my worst-case scenario was to lose power during the season’s coldest temperatures. I have a few batteries I use for power tools, and I charged them all up so I could use them to power lights or recharge phones. I have some firewood we could use in the fireplace, but not nearly enough to keep the whole house warm for any significant length of time. If we lost power, we’d lose heat, and that would probably mean we’d have pipes freeze and we’d lose water, too. We bought some bottled water to have on hand.

I started thinking about how I’d try to make the most of the fireplace. I came up with a plan to hang up blankets over the entryways of the room where our fireplace is, sort of enclosing it so the heat from the fireplace would mostly stay in the room rather than being dispersed throughout the house. We could use a lot less wood if we moved everybody into that single room and all slept there.

We have a big blanket that I had in mind for this; it’s probably big enough for a King- or Queen-sized bed, and it’s heavy enough to keep a lot of heat in. It’s not a little rinky-dink blanket, and it’s thicker than a curtain. As I started thinking about turning this blanket more or less into a giant curtain to help box in our living room, I’m not sure why, but I thought of the temple veil mentioned in the Gospels.

The temple veil was a big, thick curtain (probably multiple inches thick) that was used to separate the innermost sanctuary of the temple, the “Holy of Holies,” or the Earthly dwelling place of God’s presence, from the rest of the temple that was otherwise accessible to men. The veil was meant to illustrate the fact that sin separates humanity from the Lord’s presence.

In the New Testament, the veil is most famous for what happened immediately after Christ’s death. His passing was such a momentous event that it literally rocked the world and caused supernatural phenomena. Matthew 27:50-52 says And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks splitand the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life.

There’s no way I’d be strong enough to rip the blanket I was preparing to use, and it’s much smaller and thinner than the temple veil. The fact that the temple veil was torn apart from top to bottom, which could have been as much as 60 feet tall, is amazing! It’s symbolic of the idea that Jesus’ death provided a way to overcome the sin-caused separation. Because of Christ’s sacrifice, no longer are believers separated from the Lord’s presence. Only God could have torn the veil apart so completely while illustrating the symbolism so richly.

Well thankfully we still have electricity and we haven’t had to MacGyver any emergency heating arrangements. Even so, this exercise helped serve as a reminder of just how significant and powerful Christ’s death on the cross was for us.

I hope you’re all safe and warm, that you’re dug out of any frozen precipitation you may have received, and that you’re living confidently in light of what Christ’s done for you. God bless!

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Is Anybody Even Listening to What I Say?

Very few people know this about me (or remember it), but I had an odd way of trying to make extra money once upon a time. After college I moved back in with Mom and Dad and my main job was working in construction while I paid back student loans. The money was good, but the job usually only went until about 3 pm and I had some extra time and energy as a young 20-something, so I went looking for a side hustle. Oddly enough, there was a brief chapter in my life where I was a telemarketer.

Now you have to understand, I hate when telemarketers call me, so it was an interesting development. This was more than 20 years ago; back then it wasn’t robo-calls, it was actual pick-up-the-phone-and-call-someone stuff. I got a huge list of phone numbers, broken down by Eastern, Central, Mountain, and Pacific time zones. I didn’t have names, just phone numbers. To provide privacy to our home phone number, the system was set up so I’d call and log into it, and then I’d be able to dial other phone numbers from there.

I had a script to use for pitching the product. Truth be told, I don’t even remember what I was trying to sell, or who I worked for. I called so many phone numbers. Hardly anybody answered. It would be some ridiculous ratio like, call 10 numbers to get someone who picks up, but only one in 10 people you talk to would even listen to your whole pitch, so you’d have to make like, a hundred calls before you even get a glimmer of hope. (And that’s probably being generous.) Between all those calls and tying up Mom and Dad’s phone line, it didn’t take me long to figure out that this wasn’t worth the effort for me. I quit without ever making a sale.

Not to discourage anybody, but it can kinda feel like that sometimes with spreading the Gospel. You can have tons of conversations, you can scatter that seed far and wide, and you can live your life in a way that people know there’s something different about you, but sometimes you wonder if you’re making a difference for the Kingdom of Christ.

For those of you who may feel this way, I’d like to point you to the parable of the sower, found in the books of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. As Jesus explained the parable to them, He explained that some people who heard the Gospel received it with gladness but then rejected it at the first sign of trouble, or how others had the Good News choked out by worry or wealth. Finally though, He talked about the good soil. Matthew 13:23 says “But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.”

This is very heartening news! Although there will be varying degrees of fruitfulness, this verse is saying that all Christians will be fruitful to some degree. Nobody’s wasting their time. Don’t quit spreading the Good News. You might not be there when someone “crosses the threshold,” but your efforts can be part of the collective body of work that it takes to get them to that threshold. Think of a tree branch that snaps under the weight of snow in a snowstorm. On their own, each individual snowflake doesn’t do much, but at the direction of the Holy Spirit, the collective weight of all of them brings them to the point where something big happens.

So keep spreading the news with gladness wherever you are and in whatever role you find yourself. You’ll only find out the full story of your impact in Heaven.

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Many Parts, One Body. Many Personalities, One Mind?

There are a lot of different kinds of people out there. Think about all the different personality types you’ve dealt with. There’s usually something specific that characterizes each one. Some people are amazingly creative. Others have a strong sense of loyalty, or compassion, or are optimistic, or have a dangerous temper.

It’s interesting to me that when you consider all the different personalities out there, when you boil down the essence of each of these types, that central thing is usually something that can be considered a trait of God. The things I just listed…there are examples in the Bible of God displaying each of those characteristics:

  • Creativity – With no point of reference, God just kind of…invented a huge diversity of living things, from centipedes to elephants, mosquitoes to squids.
  • Loyalty – How many times did the Lord get sick of the Israelites complaining and abandoning Him after leaving Egypt, but He stuck with them anyway?
  • Compassion – Multiple times in the Gospels, Christ was moved with compassion to help people, either because of their spiritual plight or because of the faith they displayed.
  • Optimism – Despite all the evil in the world, God knows how this story ends, and He’s shared enough of the story with us to give us hope.
  • Wrath – There’s some pretty intense stuff in the Old Testament about God’s wrath: putting down an insurrection against Moses, 10 plagues on Egypt, destroying the world with a flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, kicking the money-changers out of the temple, etc.

Normally when I think about the character of God, these “right brained” aspects are the first to come to mind. Something we don’t often think about is the highly ordered and symmetrical side of God’s character. There’s actually quite a bit of orderliness and symmetry God displays. We don’t often think about it because it’s usually in more macro terms than we think in, or it’s captured in parts of the Bible we don’t like to read.

For example, did you ever stop to think about how the Old Testament is arranged? There are 39 books in the Old Testament. You might think they’re thrown together in a random order, but their layout is quite deliberate and makes sense once you realize the arrangement’s significance. Those 39 books encompass history, wisdom/poetry/praise, and prophecy.

The book of Ezekiel captures a lot of God’s orderliness and symmetry. In the Millennial kingdom described in Ezekiel, the land of Israel will be broken down into 13 “zones,” one for each tribe plus one for the temple and public use. Within the temple/public use section, there are very deliberate instructions for how the land’s boundaries and layout are to be set up, including where the temple grounds are to be situated. This includes the temple itself, areas for the temple priests to live, areas for growing crops, other areas dedicated to public use, and two very large areas dedicated to the prince (the human governor or administrator of the land at that time).

Zooming in even further, Ezekiel chapters 40-43 describe the layout and dimensions of the temple yet to be built. The largest building’s main opening faces east. There are inner and outer courtyards, multiple gates, kitchens and storage areas for the priests, and the altar. It’s arranged in a very detail-oriented manner, with each element serving a purpose.

This is one of the things in the Bible you probably don’t pay all that much attention to, but it’s definitely some supporting evidence that God doesn’t just cater to those who are strong on intuition/creativity/holistic thinking. He definitely has a logical/analytical/detail-oriented nature to Him, too. If you’ve been looking at the Bible and wondering why there’s so much emphasis on the emotional, artsy side of things, maybe you just need to look in the right places to find more rational thought, sequential logic, and specific instructions.

Praise You, Lord, for the immense variety of life and personalities You’ve created. Since we are made in Your image, the good things in us are reflections of some of Your personality traits, and we thank You for that ever-present reminder. Help us remember even if someone is different from us, they, too, are made in Your image, and need to hear the good news about You. Amen.

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God’s Evolution vs. Darwin’s Evolution

Last summer I visited some family in Kentucky, and while we were there we took the opportunity to go visit the “Ark Encounter.” If you’re not familiar with this attraction, it’s a full-size replica of Noah’s ark, built to the specifications listed in the Bible.

There’s no getting around it…the thing is huge. I mean, it’s massive. One of the questions I had before showing up was “okay, yeah, Genesis lists the external dimensions of the ark, but it doesn’t say a whole lot about what the place looks like on the inside. What would it look like?”

Well I’ll be the first to admit that the replica’s designers took liberties with some of the things they displayed, but it was still interesting to see. This is one way it could have looked (though probably without water fountains, restrooms, and handicap-accessible decks). “Here’s how they could have stored this or that.” “Here’s how they could keep some of the bugs contained.” “This is one way they could have managed all the waste.” “During nice weather, they could have opened the roof like this.” They did present interesting ideas like “We usually imagine the animals on the ark to be full-grown adults, but since God’s pretty smart, He may have chosen to do something else, like bring adolescent or juvenile specimens to Noah’s doorstep. After all, a pair of 2-year-old elephants would take up a lot less room, eat a lot less food, and have time to produce a lot more offspring than a pair of 50-year-old elephants.” Hmmm, I never thought about that; that’s a good point.

One of the things I thought was most interesting was an explanation of Evolution after the flood. When we think of Darwin’s version of Evolution, the theory supposes that when an organism needs to gain some kind of function for the sake of survival, it simply adds to its DNA. Mutations occur, adding new combinations of DNA base pairs. When confronted with scientific reality, the chances of this happening in a single generation (“evolve or die”) are pretty remote. It’s much easier to look at a different type of mutation: deletion.

Instead of adding to our DNA, what if the different species on the ark were so genetically rich and diverse that they were all able to lose a great deal of their DNA to deletions over multiple generations and still lead to specialized species differentiation? After all, if all the humans on the planet, in all their vast genetic diversity, came from the same pair (Adam and Eve), those two progenitors must have possessed the DNA necessary for every genetic trait we can observe in present-day humans. The only difference between all the different people is the DNA that got dropped over the years.

That’s a fantastic amount of variety! After the flood humanity spread around the planet, but often clustered together into gene pools with similar traits. At the very general level, Asians looked like Asians, Europeans looked like Europeans, Africans looked like Africans, and so forth. It’s not that one race of people somehow evolves into another, it’s more like the physical appearance of these different groups have become more specialized over time through generation after generation of people that have offspring with people who are similar to them. Over time the genes become less diverse, not more diverse.

Things are different in the modern age. The original trunk of very diverse humans split into many smaller less-diverse trunks, but now the convenience of modern travel has made the world smaller, and it’s become much more common for people of mixed races to have children together. Though I’m sure it pales in comparison to what it looked like at the beginning, it’s injecting gene pools with big doses of genetic diversity.

Dogs are another example. If there were only two dogs on the ark, every breed of modern dog you see today came from that one pair. Chihuahuas, Schnauzers, Great Danes, Boxers, Hound Dogs, Pugs, Border Collies, and Teacup Poodles all came from the same ancestors, but breeders intentionally isolated particular genes to produce specialized types of canines, dropping the genes they’re not interested in. A mutt has more genetic diversity than a purebred dog does.

Regardless of whether an individual person has a lot of diversity or almost none in their DNA, they are our neighbor. They need to hear about Christ and His offer to pull us out of a future of eternal condemnation, and they need to hear about Him through you and I. If you’re talking to someone who doesn’t want anything to do with the Bible, though, stuff like this is one way you can point to the idea of Intelligent Design. Life didn’t just spontaneously spring into existence; someone put it here, and the Bible says how God did it.

Anyway, I thought that visit was interesting. God and science co-exist. I hope you can use stuff like this in your conversations with unsaved folks.

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The Difference Between Good and Great

As an enlisted troop in the Air Force, I picked up on some of the nuances of performance appraisals from a friendly Captain. I’m not sure how much things have changed since then, but at the time, it seemed customary to not say anything bad about the person being evaluated.

How do you distinguish between a troop that’s outstanding and a troop that’s sub-par? According to this Captain, it was all in the nuance.

“If you’ve got a troop who’s absolutely amazing, can do no wrong, and you think should be promoted immediately, you say things like ‘they walk on water,’ or ‘they stand head and shoulders above the rest.’ If, on the other hand, you’ve got somebody who still needs to do some learning, you talk about how much ‘potential’ they have.”

I protested a bit. “But isn’t ‘potential’ a good thing?”

“It is, but it means it’s not yet realized. ‘Potential’ refers to untapped talent that has yet to be harnessed.”

I was thankful for this little glimpse into the art of politely distinguishing between the skill levels of subordinates, and in a way, I believe it applies to Christ-followers today. You see, at the moment of salvation, the Holy Spirit imparts spiritual gifts to Believers. He calls us to use those gifts for His glory, but He doesn’t often compel us to use them. Empowered by the Holy Spirit, our potential as Christians is absolutely through the roof, and we each individually decide how much we want to allow God to have His way in our lives. The more the better, as we’ll see when we get that final performance appraisal from the Lord.

(As far as I know, Simon Peter is the only guy other than Jesus who could have a performance appraisal claiming a literal ability to “walk on water,” at least for a little while.)

It’s not possible for us to be “too” good at using those spiritual gifts. Don’t worry, God will put a cap on what He wants out of our employment of those gifts. It’s the minimum ability we should be focused on. Our goal? By the time we take our last breath, we should have no remaining untapped potential to use our spiritual gifts.

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Bringing up the Ones Who Come Behind You

This past weekend my family went to a Tobymac concert.

For those who don’t know, Tobymac is a Christian recording artist. At this point he’s been around for a long time; he initially gained fame as part of the Christian rock/rap group DC Talk, then began a solo career once they disbanded. He used to do a lot of high-energy songs that found their way into my workout playlist, and while he still does some of that, his style has evolved over time to include a pretty wide variety of music types.

When I was a kid I listened to a Christian singer named Steven Curtis Chapman. I wouldn’t say he was a country singer, but he definitely had a folksy twang as part of his sound. On one of his albums, he collaborated with a young Tobymac, who was part of DC Talk at the time, on a song called “Got To B Tru.” For this particular song, Steven Curtis Chapman (folksy twang) decided he was going to jump into the obnoxious rap scene popular in the early 90’s (the kind Tobymac was a part of). It was a fun crossover, and it helped raise Tobymac’s profile to have such a well-known artist as Steven Curtis Chapman work on a song with him.

I then started paying attention to Tobymac in the early 2000s when I heard a song of his make it onto some kind of rock compilation album I picked up somewhere. Then in 2007 or 2008 my young wife and I went to see him in concert for the first time as part of his “Portable Sounds” tour. As I’ve continued paying attention to his work, it’s become obvious that he was very grateful for the opportunity as a young artist to work with a headliner, and he’s done numerous collaborations with younger or less-well-known performers since gaining his own success.

This past weekend while our family waited for him to take the stage, four different acts came out and performed a set list of their own. Some of these singers I’ve never heard of, but in most cases I knew at least one of the songs they performed. Truth be told, Tobymac was the guy I came to see, and I would have been fine if I only saw his act. These other performers, though, benefit from being on tour with a more seasoned veteran.

Even though few, if any, members of the audience came to see these other acts, being on a tour like this provides them with valuable learning opportunities. They gain experience learning how to work the crowd. They learn a bit about how to craft their stage presence. They might discover things they should not attempt while on stage. These four acts were in various stages of development, and a couple of them could probably soon start to go on tours of their own. It might be a little much for them to scrape together enough startup cash to plan a tour of their own right now, but being in a positions where they can borrow a piece of equipment from someone else on the tour if a speaker’s on the fritz gives them more of a cushion and some experience dealing with unanticipated problems on the road that will benefit them later in their career.

I’m not going to pretend taking four warm-up acts on the road is totally out of the goodness of Tobymac’s heart; I’m sure there’s some kind of financial benefit involved for him. Even so, he likely had to go out of his way to convince a few folks to include more than two or three opening acts on the tour. Whoever those final additions to the tour were, I’m sure they benefitted from it.

In your life, is there someone you could take under your wing and help to get started, either in their career, their ministry, or in some other aspect of their life? I’m sure you’ve gained a lot of hard-fought lessons that only come from experience. While many younger folks out there may not care to benefit from it, there are probably others who would. Even though it might add a little inconvenience, would you consider helping them out as they try to get some direction or some momentum?

Lord, thank you so much for those who’ve come before me and lent me a hand, some good advice, or some encouragement along the way. Help me use the lessons I’ve learned to help others who aren’t as far along as I am. Amen.

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Quick Hit: Why is Eden Guarded?

After expelling Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, God posted angels with flaming swords near its perimeter to ensure they didn’t come back in. Ever wonder why?

The most obvious answer is as a consequence of their disobedience. God warned them what not to do; since they disobeyed, He had to impose consequences.

But an often-overlooked reason relates to what could still happen if humans got back in. The only limitation God put on the original pair was to avoid eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They obviously missed the mark there, but the Garden still had a very special tree whose fruit would catastrophically affect fallen humans: the Tree of Life.

“And the Lord God said, ‘The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.’” – Genesis 3:22

Genesis isn’t terribly clear on whether they ate from the Tree of Life before they sinned, but it’s probably safe to assume they did at some point (how could you not try everything the Garden has to offer?). I can’t honestly say I understand what happens when sinless humans eat that tree’s fruit, but it would be a pretty big deal if an imperfect, sinful human ate from it. The verse above makes it pretty clear they’d be preserved in a sinful state forever. Christ still died for them/us, but without death, how can we ever be restored to true life?

In His infiniteness, God could doubtless still make a way to redeem them, but He chose, in His mercy, to prevent anyone from reaching the tree in the first place.

Still can’t get over the loss of that tree? Don’t worry, we’ll have access to it in the future: Revelation 22:1-3a notes “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed.” Don’t worry; you’ll get your shot at that tree (and its 12 different kinds of fruit) someday!

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Some People Have Skeletons in Their Closet; Mine’s Packed With Gear

Adventure-wise, I’ve done a lot of weird stuff in my life. I have logbooks, journals, and other things that helped chronicle adventures now long gone. I’ve invested thousands of dollars into equipment most people don’t normally get a chance to use. Here’s a partial list of gear I’ve either owned in the past or still own today:

Cross-country skis, poles, and boots

Skydiving container, parachute, reserve parachute, jumpsuit, wrist altimeter, goggles

Semi-dry suit, wetsuit, buoyancy control device, dive computer, regulators, extra weights, booties, fins, gloves, mask, snorkel, various accessories

Multiple climbing harnesses, four different climbing ropes, 15+ carabiners, rigging plate, pulleys, 100+ feet of webbing, figure 8s, ATCs, ascenders, block & tackle, assorted cordage

Paintball gun, paintball mask, CO2 cylinders, thousands of paintball rounds

Cold-weather gear, rain gear, boots

GPS receiver, two-way radios, headlamps, lanterns, flashlights, spotlight, flares, glow sticks, binoculars, glacier glasses, gear bags, backpacks, various knives, fire-starting metal match, 550 cord, tarps

(I don’t think I’ve ever put together a list like this, and looking at it now, I have to express how fortunate I am to not be maimed, seriously injured, or dead as a result of eccentric hobbies. I have no idea how many waivers I’ve signed in my life. Lord, thank you and please pass along my thanks to my guardian angel(s) for me! But that’s not the point I set out to make.)

It’s fun to still have a lot of these relics from long ago. Many of these items are intended for very specific uses, while others can be used in a variety of situations. When I look at some of this gear now, it’s beat up or well worn due to heavy use. Other pieces are almost brand new, even years later, because they either haven’t been used or I only used them lightly. Some of my most well-worn gear includes my cross-country skis and the climbing harnesses and ropes (considering the condition of the climbing gear, those guardian angels deserve another shout-out!). Other stuff that was pretty much a waste of money includes the semi-dry suit (I used it one weekend and still have it, almost 20 years later) and the wetsuit (I’ve had it the same amount of time, but never even got it wet).

At one time or another I owned all of that gear, so it was up to me how often and in what fashion I used it. Users know every piece of gear must one day be pulled from service because it doesn’t last forever. I sometimes had to make the conscious decision to say “you’re starting to wear out, I’m going to sideline you on this smaller adventure so I can save your remaining utility for something bigger,” or “no, I’m not going to bring you along with me this time because based on what I intend to do, I won’t need you this time.”

If, at any point, any of that gear had said to me “I don’t think I’m up for this,” or started repeatedly protesting the manner in which I intended to use it, I likely would have altered my plans for using it. I probably would have started viewing it as unreliable or not worth the hassle. If you look back at the list of gear I wrote down, most of it is used for activities where you can’t accept the use of questionable equipment. If I have unreliable gear but still have my mind set on taking part in the activity, what am I to do? I can either replace it with a piece of more reliable gear, or figure out another way to do what I’m trying to do using the rest of the stuff I have on hand.

Some of the more worn pieces of equipment I have are the ones that have been most reliable, and I have specific memories of how they’ve come through for me when I asked a lot from them. When you consider that we, as Christians, are tools wielded by the Lord to be used for His purposes (purposes we don’t understand or get a say in), it should be our goal to be up for the challenge whenever the Master opens the doors to his gear racks and looks through what He’s got to work with. If that’s the attitude we maintain, by the end of our lives, we’re going to have a very well-worn quality due to heavy use. That’s a good thing.

Make it your goal to, by the end of your life, lose the shine that accompanies lack of use. We shouldn’t be hung up in the closet, still bright and colorful; we should have frayed seams, some chips and dings, and be a little faded. For those of you who have lived your life serving the Lord, or who have temporarily parted ways with loved ones after their years of faithful service to Him, take comfort in the fact that He has fond and specific memories of the ways you and yours have come through for Him.

One day that shine and color will be renewed, even brighter than the original.

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Hoping for the Best is Not a Course of Action

I went into college not knowing what I wanted to major in. That kind of thing is fine, as long as you figure it out a semester or two into the degree. I didn’t figure out what direction I wanted to go until I started running out of general education classes and had to decide what to start concentrating on. I’ve written before about how the choices (or lack thereof) I made early in college affected how the rest of my college career turned out.

I think I was halfway through my sophomore year when I figured out I was going to pursue a degree in biology. If you’re majoring in any kind of science, you’ll need to complete a lot of science classes (imagine that!). Science classes normally come with a lab session that occurs in the afternoon, so a typical science class meets for three hours during the mornings of a week, and one afternoon a week there will be a three-hour lab session. If you stack up two or three science classes in a semester, you start running out of room in your schedule. You can see how it’s nice to spread out the required classes over eight semesters rather than five.

Since I found myself running a little behind schedule, I looked around for opportunities to catch up. It turns out my school offered something called a May term. After the regular spring semester ended and most students went home, a handful of classes were available. One-credit courses like tennis lasted a week. Two-credit classes went two weeks, and so on. One of the options was a four-credit science course I’d need for graduation. I ended up enrolling in it and stuck around after the spring semester wrapped and all my friends went home for the summer.

That class had to be one of the most stressful classes I took for my whole degree. The course material that was normally spread out over a semester got compressed into four weeks. Class all morning, take a lunch break, then meet in the lab for three or four hours every weekday afternoon. After that, grab some dinner, go back to your room and work on a paper or read the next chapter for the following day. I would read the material, but my mind just didn’t have the time to absorb it like it did during a normal semester. The lab sessions relied heavily on genetics experiments we did with fruit flies, which had a 14-day life cycle, and we needed to get at least two generations to have results for our final paper, so there wasn’t much room for error. While students in other classes spent their afternoons playing ultimate Frisbee or sunning themselves on the quad, I spent my time worrying about bug larvae.

The weeks went by, and as the shorter classes finished up, fewer and fewer students remained on campus. I was so stressed. I was the oldest person in the class; everyone else was an honors student who had spent the second half of their freshman year doing a semester abroad, and this class was mostly available to help them keep up with their pre-med degree plan. I wasn’t quite on the same level as them academically.

I eventually made it through the class, but it was a rough go for awhile. Here’s the important thing: I did this to myself. I didn’t do it on purpose, but it was my lack of planning ahead that led to this predicament. I had to live with the consequences of my own actions.

As Christians, we have the hope of the life to come, but first we have to make it through this one. People of all races, nationalities, and backgrounds are Christians, and Heaven will be full of incredible diversity as we’re united in Christ. All of us, however, will have had to live with the consequences of either our actions or someone else’s actions. That could mean broken relationships, poor credit history, self-inflicted medical issues, or a variety of other challenges.

As a Christian equipped with spiritual gifts, how are you empowered to either help yourself or help others through the unique challenges in life?