So, we are down to the last full week of classes and then finals week. That knowledge can elicit many varied responses on your part. For example… panic, because you have so much left to do before the school year ends. Or, perhaps you will respond with a sigh of relief—just glad to have made it through the school year. Maybe you experience frenzied anticipation, because you have big plans for your summer and you can’t wait to get started. Whatever your response to the knowledge that school is out in two weeks, I still have some advice for you on “How to end your school year.”

First, keep your heart close to Jesus. The stresses of the end of the school year can cause lots of anxiety, and Jesus is the only person in your life who can actually help you deal with those anxious moments. He, and he alone, knows your heart. Spend some extra time in his word, this week. You may think you don’t have the time. But if you take the time to listen to his word you will not regret the investment. May I recommend Psalm 119?

Second, keep your heart close to your Christian friends, your roommate(s) and any other significant relationships you have built this school year. Guard your friendships. Don’t leave for summer break regretting that you didn’t spend time investing in your friends’ lives. Those people in your life may be under lots of pressure these last few days. Offer a listening ear to those who are hurting, or who are confused. Don’t leave for the summer until you have given every person you love a hug “goodbye.”

And finally, persevere. It is a good Biblical word. It basically means… “stick to the task until the task is done.” Avoid the temptation to take shortcuts in your final projects or in studying for finals. Don’t let weariness in the last two weeks cause you to quit before you reach the finish line. The Apostle Paul wrote about perseverance in his own spiritual life in his letter to his young protégé, Timothy (2 Timothy 4:7-8): 7 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. 8 Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.

Imagine this. You wake up. You are having a bad day. You’re attitude is Mr. Grumpy Gus. I’m sure you have had days like this. I know I have. If you are anything like me on your bad day you really do not want to talk to anyone, and you sometimes just want to retreat to a place of solitude.

Let me share with you a moment where I was recently in a grumpy mood and just flat out mad. You see some guys and I went on a five day backpacking trip the first half of Spring Break. We had been having a great time and were on our second to last day in the forest. We knew the night before that we were going to be for some rain on the next day so we took some extra precautions in setting up our tents. We wanted to make sure we were going to stay dry as we slept.

Long about 3 in the morning I woke up to the sound of rain on the tent. I rolled over and my feet got wet. This meant one of two things. Either I had a serious bladder problem, or we had water in our tent. The good news of this story, it wasn’t a serious bladder problem. The bad news, Augie and I woke up with several puddles of standing water in our tent. Much of our gear, like our sleeping bags and sleeping pads, was wet. Even the few extra clothes I had packed for the trip were wet, and they were inside my hiking pack. This wasn’t how I expected to start this day. Needless to say, I never really did fall back asleep after I discovered the water. I found myself just laying there mad that my tent, which was water proof, somehow had leaked water to the inside.

As I laid there in my wet sleeping bag from 3am to around 6am, when we were going to wake up and get ready for our next hike, I just kept thinking to myself how mad I was. Somewhere around 5:30 I started humming songs to myself and I’m not really sure why, but an old familiar song popped into my head. I hadn’t heard this song but a few times since I left my home church when I went to college. The chorus goes like so:

“This is the day that the lord has made

I will rejoice and be glad in it

This is the day, this is the day

That the lord has made”

I thought it was ironic that here I was in a foul mood, just to realize that even if I’m in a foul mood, this day was made especially by my Lord and Savior. Psalms 118, the psalmist writes “ This is the day which the Lord has made; Let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

So I conclude with this. When you are having a “bad day” and things are not going your way and your just frustrated remember this. This day, this downright yucky day, it’s a day that God has provided. We should really rejoice and thank him for providing you with just another day to live.

I encourage you to step back and take a different look at your day when it’s turning out to be bad.

Do you ever just take a some time to just think about or mull over an idea?

There are times I sit and just wonder what it must have been like in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve would walk with God in the cool of the day in paradise. Or I wonder how chaotic and terrifying it must have been like when God confused the language of the people building the Tower of Babel. I think about how amazing it would be to witness the fire from heaven coming down on Elijah’s alter in answer to his prayers. I wonder what Jesus and the disciples talked about in the times not recorded in the New Testament...and I try to imagine the nights around the fire with the stars overhead and what jokes or questions would have been tossed around as their bond of friendship became stronger and stronger. I wonder if I were alive at that time, would I have believed that the Messiah had truly come? I try to imagine what it would be like to see Jesus’ face.

Do you ever just take some time and ponder questions like these? I think we can get so caught up with life, that we forget to just take time and wonder. What do you wonder about?

So, it’s my last year here and after I get back from the Arizona mission trip, I will be heading back home and from there, I hope to find a job. It’s a little scary, not really knowing what’s going on after spending 7 years at Eastern (5 for undergrad then 2 for the internship) and knowing what will be coming up next with classes and the internship. From that fear of the unknown future, I’ve had thoughts of, what does God want me to do? How will I know? In the past, I’ve had the idea that if pray hard enough that God would show me which way to go. That he would guide me to which ever path he wants me to go on. So I would pray for his guidance to show me which way to go, which path he wanted me to go, and also pray for my eyes to be open so that I could see his leading. BUT! It never showed up. I never saw “the way” that God wanted me to go. There never was this guarantee that I got.

I’ve been reading a book called, Decision Making and the Will of God by Garry Friesen. And one of the main points that he talks about is the difference of the traditional view of the will of God and the wisdom view. In the traditional view, imagine the will of God being a bulls-eye and you are the archer. In order for you to be in God’s will, you must hit it directly and if you miss the mark, then you are not in God’s will. How does this translate into my life? If I was deciding on what college or job to choose, then according to the traditional view, there is only one right decision and any other choice is wrong.

In the wisdom view he, Garry Friesen, advocates, there is no bulls-eye that we need to hit in order to be in God’s will. Instead, God has given us freedom to make these decisions ourselves with the wisdom that is given to us through the Bible. So, if there were choices to be made about choosing a college or job, there is no one right choice. There can be multiple decisions that line up with God’s will but we are given the wisdom to weigh each choice and then the freedom to choose while knowing that each choice is within God’s will.

Reading this book has given me new insight into the way I make decisions, especially such important ones regarding what I will be doing after I am done here. No longer do I pray for God to guide me or show me the “right” decision, but now I pray for his wisdom and guidance as I make decisions. And as I make these decisions, I won't be gripped with the fear that I have made a wrong decision somewhere and missed the bullseye.