Legacy

Legacies.  A legacy is what we leave behind when our time comes, and what we're remembered for.  Legacies tend to reflect how much a person loved God and loved others in life. 

When Jesus was asked which of the commandments was the most important, he answered "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.  The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'  There is no commandment greater than these." (Mark 12:30-31).  Jesus boiled down the purpose of our lives to love God and to love others.  He gives us a bit more direction in this in the Great Commission: "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Matthew 28:19).  This is the kind of legacy we should be living now, leaving behind later, when we join our Father in Heaven.

People remember you for how you make them feel, not necessarily for what you do.  A good teacher is not remembered only because of the knowledge that they passed to their students, but also, often more so, because they made the student feel valued, regardless of how quickly or how well the student learned the material.  A good parent is not remembered for the number of presents under the Christmas tree, but for the times they were cheering at soccer games, for the times their child felt loved and worthy of love.  These are just two examples, but this is true, at least in my life, in almost every situation.

Legacies go deeper than this, though.  You are also especially remembered for the way you react in times of trouble.  "We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.  We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body" (2 Corinthians 4:8-10).  The Message version of verse ten helps us to understand its meaning, "What they did to Jesus, they do to us—trial and torture, mockery and murder; what Jesus did among them, he does in us—he lives!"  One of the reasons that we face these trials in life is to help fulfill the Great Commission.  Jesus' love for the Father and for His people, us, didn't falter in times of trouble.  Jesus should be our guide in life, and this is His example.  When Jesus was on the cross, dying not because of anything that He had done, but because of our sins, we mocked and scoffed at Him, but He asked God to forgive us, when we deserved it least, "Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing" (Luke 23:34).  This is a difficult example to follow, but we can draw strength from Jesus' words.  Right after Jesus gave the Great Commission He also gave this encouragement "And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age" (Matthew 28:20).

When we react to trials as Jesus did, we are building a legacy for God.  In all of this, the goal isn't to be remembered as "a good person".  The goal should be to be remembered as men and women of God.  I want to leave behind a legacy that God smiles on. 

What I've Learned Beyond the Classroom

As I sit here in front of my computer on the eve of my high school graduation I'm not quite sure what to say.  How do you sum up eighteen years of life, or twelve years of schooling, or even just three years in high school in a blog post?  

High school was...an adventure full of highs and lows, exciting times and disappointing ones, days complete with life lessons and days totally void of purpose.  There are two lessons, I suppose I'll call them that, that I kept coming back to since tenth grade.  The first one relates directly to God, and the second isn't as direct.

I'll start with the more direct one, I suppose.  In middle school I felt so close to God, I had days that I could almost hear Him in conversation with me.  In high school, though, life began to fill with so much more than in earlier years, and I could feel God beginning to get pushed into the periphery of my life, but even when I put everything else aside and focused on God things still felt...different.  Very rarely did I feel that closeness that I used to feel in middle school, and there were moments that I began to doubt God's presence in my life.

Only recently did I truly begin to understand why this was happening.  As we progress through the stages of life, God progresses with us.  While He is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, we are not, and because of that God reaches us in different ways.  Middle school was a time full of developing out of childhood, finding out where I fit in, and discovering who I was going to be.  It was awkward, and, at times, it was difficult to navigate, and I needed God to be, well, extremely loud and incredibly close.  While personal development continues throughout life, and certainly in high school, it's a much different experience, and we are beginning to prepare for the rest of life, gaining much more independence than in years prior.  

My faith through high school was about just that, having faith.  It was as if God was saying "Okay, we got through these three years just fine, but now you need to trust me when I tell you that I will always be near just a little bit more."  

Perhaps I can create an analogy to a story that my mom told me when we were going through photographs from my younger years.  There was a picture of me in a row boat in the lake at my grandparents' mountain home, attached to shore by a long rope.  Thinking back on that vacation I didn't remember being attached to shore, I remembered rowing independently on the lake, and I giggled, thinking that I was attached to this rope and didn't even know it.  My mom, however, told me that I had desperately wanted that rope attaching me to the shore (not that she would have let me go out unattached, anyway), that I needed to know that that rope was there reigning me in.  Middle school was like my mom's (true) version.  God was obviously there, and I was comforted by knowing without a doubt that He was with me.  High school was more like my (false) thoughts.  I didn't realize that I was attached to shore all along, but I trusted that my mom would make sure nothing bad would happen to me.  I could have gotten too far away, though, to a point where I felt like she wouldn't be able to reach me if she needed to, but all along I was attached to where she was.  I have to trust in God that He is always here, and recognize even in the times that I am unsure I am still anchored to the everlasting Lord.

The second lesson from high school is about priorities.  Tomorrow when I am beginning to tear up during Graduation it will not be because I will miss the structure of high school, or because I will miss the subjects (if I really wanted to I could take similar classes at Grove City).  I will be crying because it is a goodbye of sorts with the people who I've grown to hold so dearly.  The people in life are the important part.  God sent us here to interact and love one another, and to develop a relationship with His Son.  That is our first purpose in life, not mastering rotations and torque in Physics class (though that could be a means to fulfilling our first purpose.) 

I'm not saying that we shouldn't be focused on academics or careers, anyone who knows me knows that I would never say that those things are unimportant, but this year especially, my senior year, I've learned that it is easy to put our priorities in the wrong order.  Years from now it is unlikely that I will remember how to solve the integral of an exponential function, yet I know that I will remember the people in my life right now.  Before senior year I often put academics ahead of anything else in my life, but now I see that there are some things that can come before, or at least equivalent to, them.  There is one thing that must come before them.  God.  In all things God must be the first priority in my life. With God first, everything else will fall into place, as He'll guide me towards the proper path.

So I suppose the first lesson that I learned was about my relationship with God, and the second was about following and serving Him, neither of which is much different from the other.

Above all remember this - "For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only son, so that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life." (John 3:16)

Senioritis: A Shorter List

They say "senioritis" is a bad thing.  You get into college, and you stop trying.  You get lazy.  But I think that they're wrong.  Don't get me wrong, the traditional definition of senioritis is something to avoid, but that doesn't mean that senioritis that doesn't affect your school work is awful.

Since getting into college (Grove City College class of 2018, wooho!) I have not felt the need to slack in my schoolwork.  Since starting senior year, however, I have found that I no longer feel the need to live up to the standards of everyone around me.  I don't need to be actively involved in six different friend groups to be happy.  In fact, all that does is burn me out.  So why was I doing it until this year?

That answer is simple: because, up until this year, I was holding myself to the standards of my friends, my parents, myself, and God.  This year, I've been trying to narrow that list down to being only God.  I want my standards for myself to reflect God's, so that's an easy one to attempt to check off.  I may not have realized it until this year, but my parents' standards for me have reflected God's all along, so that one is even easier to check off.  

Ah, but then there are my friends.  I spend approximately thirty five hours a week in school with these people and then however more time after school and on the weekends, how am I supposed to just ignore them?  But, there, my friends, is the problem.  I'm not supposed to ignore them.  I'm just not supposed to be focusing on who they want me to be.  And this year has shown me the importance of that.  How many of these "friends" will I actually be in regular contact with after a month or two of our freshmen year in college?  Five, six, maybe?  So if I'm only going to remain friends with five or six of these people, why have I been struggling so hard to live up to the standards of so many more?  So there I can cross off most of the people from the friends part of my list.

"What about those five or six, though, Abby?" you ask.  Ah, well here is the best part.  Those five or six people don't have standards for me beyond the most basic of God's standards.  They just want me to be, well, me.

So now my list of standard setters is down to just one.  God.  And man, do I wish I had figured this all out a while ago, because it is just so calming to know that they only standards and judgements that matter now are God's, and His standards will only lead me down a path that I want to follow, that will not leave me weary. 

So call it some form of senioritis, if you may, but it is far from laziness and a feeling of being done.  It comes from a realization that God is the only true judge, that there is no use in exhausting myself to live up to the rest of the world's standards.  Isaiah 40:31 says "But those who hope in The Lord will renew their strength.  They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint."  Narrowing my list of people who set standards for me to God and only God is not lazy, it does not lighten the workload, but it gives the strength needed to do everything that God wishes me to do and strive to live up to each of the standards that He sets.

Time for God

Life gets busy sometimes.  It seems like there's always something that needs to be done, something that is next on the to-do list.  And when there isn't, there's TV, and Internet, and books, and journals, and all kinds of things to do to relax.  There's always friends and people to be around.  Time is always being filled.

When I made the transition from middle school to high school, I fell out of talking to God before I went to sleep.  I've never been coherent enough in the mornings to focus on Him, and with the start of high school bedtime turned into whenever I finish my homework, not after I've had time to read my Bible.  So I shouldn't have been all that surprised when I found that there was distance between God and me.

It wasn't that I decided that God was less important, consciously, at least, my prayer time just kind of...slipped away, I guess.  If you look back on all of my posts, there is a noticeable gap in the recent history, a gap during which I wasn't really making time to grow closer to God, so I had very little to share.  When prayer was no longer a part of my day to day life, it was only a matter of time until I couldn't write anymore, until I couldn't feel a purpose anymore.  God breathes life into me, and without Him, there is no life.

Starting to talk to God again, on a consistent basis, was the best thing that I have done recently.  I started a devotional reading plan on the YouVersion online/app based Bible, and starting taking some time to talk to God not only at night, but all throughout the day.  I'm making an effort to be in constant communication with Him.  Someone once told me that you are always moving when it comes to God, it's just a matter of whether you are moving towards Him, or away from Him.  For a while, I was moving away, but now I'm definitely getting closer to Him.

So today, I encourage you to make more time for God.  Do a daily devotional, read a Bible verse or two, take a few minutes to tell Him how your day is going, to thank Him for the blessings in your life, to ask for help in your trials.  He will breathe new life into you.