Confession: This Semester

Before I get into this’n it’s been freeing to say, “I was wrong.” At the end of the summer I planned out the semester, 12 hours of classes didn’t seem too bad. I’d taken a couple grad level classes before in undergrad so it seemed like it’d be doable. Mom said it was too much – she was right, I wasn’t.

It’s safe to say this has been one of the most difficult semesters I’ve had. Sure some undergrad semesters were hard, and when finals came they were really gross, but this one is taking the cake in the realm of stress, tiredness and changes. There’ve been a few breakdowns.

Taking the workload from school, the job at the church, fostering a new relationship and the normal things of life all together has been rich and difficult. Rich because there’s much to learn and much to be humbly amazed by; difficult because I’m prideful and thought I knew it all and this has been three months of being wrong. (In some ways I feel like a raw blister - hyperaware of failures.)

Yet there are three thoughts, which have made this semester more bearable:

1) Bear your burdens well.

Sure they’re heavy and sure they’re daunting, but they’ve been given to you by God to bear, so bear them well. Be emboldened by the simple fact of knowing God – for his own reasons – planned this.

 2) It’s good to be carefree.

When the moments of relaxing come, take them. Whether they’re on Skype, a phone call, staring at the stars from my front porch, in a book, with the roommates, or holding a sleeping nephew whenever and wherever learn to relax in a moment. 

 3) (This has been the most difficult to remember) your biggest problem has been taken care of by Jesus.

This one is beautiful. At the end of any day you can lay your head down on your pillow and remember it’s not your education that saves you, your job that saves you, your interactions that save you, but it’s Jesus’ death on a Roman cross two-thousand years ago that has saved you.

Sure I don’t remember all of these all the time. But at the end of my life – whenever that may be – this semester will be just a simple dark place in the patchwork of life – the dark tiles of a mosaic without which the picture is lost. You see it’s a perspective thing seeing life from the vantage point of farther along.

Monday

It’s Monday. The week is beginning. Many of us are headed to our jobs to do our tasks. Many of us are headed to our classes to be bored by our professors while we strive to just pay attention. These things seem so small, don’t they? Jobs, school and the general hustle and bustle of life.

Often these things become our focus, our aim and our goal. To succeed in the arena of job or school becomes a higher dream than knowing God.

We are broken, this is true, we are shattered by the fall but we are not helpless. We are, as faith (singular not plural) so dictates, rescued by the Rescuer.

Jesus has redeemed us from the curse of the law so that we are now capable to seeing our jobs as fuel for his glory; our schooling is now instrumental to our callings.

So go, work your job; strive to pay attention in your classes. Because the King sits on his throne and the Redeemer of your souls has covered you with grace so your guilt and your shame are no longer you. Who you are, the real you (as a believer in the gospel), is the finished work of Jesus. You are righteous because he has made you so. You stand before the throne of God above with a strong and perfect plea and it is Jesus.