James 4:14 says “For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.”
When I was a child, I remember worrying about not having enough time to spend with my parents while they were alive. I recall that I would get so upset that I would make myself physically ill. Eventually I just got over it. But always seems like we’re living for tomorrow. The things that lie ahead are so inviting that we so often forget to enjoy the present, and yes it is a trite statement but still true nonetheless.
My grandmother died at the beginning of last year. She was really the matriarch of my family, pertaining to religious beliefs and attending church. She lived a full life, touched countless lives, and lived to see her only goal accomplished, which was that her children and grandchildren would be raised in church. I can understand why the Lord took her home, when he did. What I cannot understand is the early death of people much younger, like my second cousin. He was merely 8 years old and died after a failed recovery from a lightning strike. He was severely prematurely born and struggled to live, early on. Perhaps God has a different plan, that the sole existence of a little boy for merely 8 years can have unmeasurable effects. For we know that God works in areas that man cannot see or enter.
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Ten years can hold a lot of events. The past ten years have held a lot of things, the most obvious being educational experiences. In 2000, I was still in my first year of middle school. Then 2003 I began high school and 2007 I started college. This decade has brought many growing times for this once-had-been teenager. I learned the responsibility of studying, the importance of integrity, and the price of good grades. Also growing through being a teenager to now a young adult, I have grown personally. I’m not the same insecure, shy person I was ten years ago at the age of 12. In 2000, I remember getting my first cds in my life, ever. They were WOW 1998 and Steven Curtis Chapman-The Live Adventure. I also remember buying records by Rachael Lampa and Plus One that same year. It was my first introduction to christian music. Through the years my most played artists have included True Vibe, Jeremy Camp, Falling Up, Kutless, Starfield, Cross Movement, T-Bone, Delirious, Sonicflood, Audio Adrenaline, Anberlin, and Relient K, most of who are no longer recording. Continue reading →
In the 1960’s there was a young white man named Greg who went to high school in a city of Koininia. During that time he was mistreated and not accepted. But even though he was severely picked on and beat up, he chose to turn the other cheek. 40 years after he graduated, he received an invitation to a class reunion. The letter was humbly written with sincerity by one of the people who bullied him. After Greg was convinced of the sincerity, be attended the class reunion to find an apology from every one of his persecutors. Greg admitted that it took him years to forgive them but one day he just decided to let it go and with that, he experienced a brand new beginning.
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I did it again. I gave in to the hype. I tried to fill myself with temporary joy. But again, I was let down. The flashing lights and echoing buzzers lured me in so eagerly. But it only took a short while for the temporary fulfillment to drain out leaving me with the familiar emptiness that this world fails to include in the fine print. Now another time has come and gone along with another failed attempt to find something made to last. Continue reading →
