Gift of Life/Learning to Trust God

I've wanted to write this blog for a while, but life has been getting in the way in the past couple of weeks, so I’ve had to move the blog to the backburner. Now that I’ve pushed through the unstoppable rush of tests, research papers, online Spanish and work, I’ve got time to breathe for a week or so. PTL!

A major thing that has been on my mind the last couple of weeks has been the gift of life. I’m not just talking about the blessing of living in a country like the United States that has many freedoms (which is awesome and something we take for granted far too much), but mainly the idea that we even have a chance to have life on this earth.

This has been on my mind because it seems like over the past couple of months, a lot of friends and acquaintances from my high school years in Texas have been losing family members, friends, etc. It hasn’t just been losing grandparents to old age or things like that, but instead people from my age group or people that are my parents’ age.

For example, a couple of my high school classmates were killed in a car accident a couple of weeks ago, our high school’s long-time basketball coach died from cancer, etc.

Death hasn’t ever really been a huge part of my life, so this has been a bit of a shock for me, thinking of my own morality.

These events have made me think about how much we should appreciate life on this Earth while we still have it. We must treat life as our most sacred gift, because it simply is. You hear people say this all the time, but how many of us actually live that way? How many times do we get caught up in the trials of life and find ourselves with no joy or passion to do anything?

The fact that God even gave us life is one of the most amazing things to just think about. He didn’t need to make us to make himself happy, but he wanted to spread his immense love, so he created us! Awesome.

We constantly see people stumble through their days, complaining about the little problems in life, while not taking the effort to enjoy life itself. I’ve done it, you’ve done it, we’ve all done it.

One thing we can do to make sure that we can stay happy is by remembering that our whole life is all in his hands and he knows what he’s doing. If we can always trust that God knows what he is doing, we can stop wasting time worrying on if life will work out the way we planned it.

This brings up another topic that calls back to the Idols series we had at the Rock last month. If success is one of your idols, you will always chase after it but will never be satisfied, no matter how much success you achieve. If you put all your eggs in God’s basket, he’ll take care of you and direct you in the way you are supposed to go. Once again, much easier said than done.

This situation made me think of a song that really had a good impact on me once I got to college.

Ruin my life the plans I have made
Ruin desires for my own selfish gain
Destroy the idols that have taken Your place
'Till its You alone I live for,
You alone I live for.

-Ruin Me (Jeff Johnson)

We have to be willing to get rid of what we think is best for us and listen to what God thinks is best. It’s tough to actually admit that we don’t know what the heck we are doing, but the sooner we do that, the sooner we can trust God and find joy in him.

I wanted to talk about this because of my personal experience I've been having in the past couple of months.

In my first blog post I mentioned how I was really focused on trying to get a journalism internship this summer so I could feel better about my post-graduation job outlook. I thought that if I got a good sports writing internship, I could network and almost be assured a pretty good job coming out of college, which would allow me to do what I am passionate about, give me a comfortable life and probably good enough money. I guess God had other ideas.

Late last semester, God turned my attention to the LT program that our church is having in Colorado this summer (check the picture at the top). I don’t know how I got interested, but I guess I just was desperate for some solid plans this summer and God provided it. As I thought about my decision, I could hear God telling me that Colorado was the place I should go and that getting an internship probably wasn’t as important as I thought it was. I'm fairly solid in my belief that this is where I'm supposed to be.

This experience has taught me a good lesson: always trust God. You may think you know how your life is going to play out and what the best scenario would be for you, but God probably knows a little bit better than you.

He’s got it all under control.