Is It Bad That I Can't Come Up With A Title?

Thank goodness for good friends and comfort food.  At the beginning of the summer, a couple of friends from high school (Joshua and Laney) and I stumbled upon the topic of our faith, and the worries we had about leaving our college-town churches to return back to our hometown for the next three months.  It was a pretty big step for all of us to leave the comfort of the churches we had all become accustomed to here and find new ones at school, but I can definitely attest to the fact that the time I've spent in Conway has both challenged and strengthened my walk with Christ.  My first year in college has proven to be totally and completely different from my life back here, and to go into detail would require a novel (which, judging by my newfound lack of word conservation, just might be possible).

Anyhoo, one night, we all met up at our high school football field.  Walking around the track, we began talking about the churches and bible studies we had been parts of in college, and it became pretty clear that a necessary part of our lives was that fellowship with other believers--not a mandatory and regulated gathering of others, but a voluntary and driven time devoted to getting a deeper understanding of the wonders of God.  So, we decided to have our own.  I can say without a shadow of a doubt that the Lord blessed me with these two amazing people.

You probably wouldn't believe me if I told you how many times we had to take this picture!

On the track that night, we decided to read David Platt's Radical.  

A Bible study?  Good.  A Bible study with S'more cookie bars?  Even better.  =]

A specific paragraph in Radical kept echoing in my mind throughout the week: 

"'Wake up.'  Wake up and realize that there are infinitely more important things in your life than football and a 401(k).  Wake up and realize there are real battles to be fought, so different from the superficial meaningless "battles" you focus on.  Wake up to the countless multitudes who are currently destined for a Christless eternity."

Perhaps everyone who knows me will be willing to tell you that I am a klutz, and the last time I decided it would be a good idea to do some yard work, I was reminded of my horrid inability to avoid hurting myself.  When trying to dig up a tree, I drove a shovel right into my toe.  I have no luck with aim, apparently.  For at least the next seventy-two seconds, my toe was the most important thing in my world.  I have to wonder how often I let other little things in my life become the big "battles" I face, simply because they're all I focus on.  

I have wrestled with the monster that is my wardrobe.  I've run from the difficulties of a GPA.  I've been involved in a warfare of sorts with the inability to get into a silly chemistry class.  In the grand scheme of things, what does it matter?  When I stand before God, will He seriously look at me and say, "That GPA was definitely more important than reaching out to others."  Don't get me wrong--I don't think good grades are the enemy, but letting my perspective be twisted and manipulated into a false reality that tells me my little problems are actually huge crises is not doing me or the rest of the world any justice.  

Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.” But as it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil. Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin.

James 4:14-17