I haven’t posted in a while. I have written several unfinished posts and decided to let them die. Although I feel bad about this, I just got out of the worst college semester I have experienced, yet. I took classes that I despised, totaled my car, endured money problems, faced crisis within my family, and much more that I’d rather not post on a blog. What am I supposed to say? “Shoot. That sucked,” “Boy, I’m in the pits,” “Oh, darn”? Actually, when reflecting on this past semester, one passage of scripture comes to mind: “2Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. 3More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Romans 5:2-5). I fell in love with this passage at the conclusion of this past college semester. It moved me to reflect on all of the trials I faced and how I pulled through with 3 A’s and a B in a statistics class that almost brought about my demise. More than that, I realized how much I grew as a Christian, son, boyfriend, student, and even a Junior High leader.
There is a phrase in Romans 5:2-5 that I’ve grown cling to: “…we rejoice in hope of the glory of God”. More specifically, there is a word that moves me, “hope”. How can we survive without the hope that our savior has given us? How can we live without being completely depressed? When everything around us is deteriorating and we have lost all motivation to move on, we still have hope. We still have the hope given to us in Christ. We know that when all else is failing around us, we still have the God of the universe who loves us, makes everything work together for our good. Romans 5 tells us that we should “rejoice in our sufferings”. God loves us so much, that he allows us to face tribulation and learn from enduring through the “tough times”, rather than just putting us in a bubble and making sure we are never harmed. In that case, we would never grow or learn!
Rather than looking back with frustration and anger, I will choose to praise the Lord for this past semester.
