Under Pressure

A driving force in many people's lives is the need to feel accepted. This need is so fundamental to the human condition that most of us aren't even aware of it most of the time.
Our peers influence us in how we look, act, and speak. (Lite speak anyone? It's short for "elite speak", which computer-savvy people use sometimes, that replaces letters with characters. A T, for instance, becomes a 7 and an S is a $. It has morphed into more common shorthand, such as "lol", "rofl", and so on.)
Our parents are an influence which more and more people, especially teenagers, attempt to resist. Studies in the sociology field reveal how single parenting, foster care, and gangs influence national family dynamics.
Teachers and coaches set expectations for performance in academic and athletic settings. They can touch lives for good, ill, or not at all.
Romantic relationships with boyfriends and girlfriends can introduce all kinds of complicated issues and problems, and often these relationships are the most powerful of any that a young person will engage in.
So many people influence our views and lives, it is difficult to know who is trustworthy, who is more than a pretty face with a silver tongue. In the search for a trustworthy friend and audience, the message of an all-powerful, always-loving God may seem too good to be true. I think that God does reach out to everyone, so that all may be saved. But I also believe that God reveals Himself to His friends. So as a student working hard to be the best and do her best, keeping an accurate view of her audiences is essential to not only being successful, but being impactful as well. I feel like remembering to perform for an Audience of One, rather than the Audience of JBU or the Audience of Family, will help prevent some downfalls in the future, such as burn-out or fear of failure and obsession with success.
College is fun, right? I can't think of a better way to ruin that fun than to get so wrapped up in our grades that we miss out on every other part of our education.

Service, Sacrifice, and Obedience

Choose one of the following prompts to respond to

1. What does Oswald Chambers mean when he says ‘The greatest competitor of devotion to Jesus is service for Him”? (39-40) What are some of the examples of ways students might allow service to Jesus to interfere with devotion to Jesus? 

 Oswald Chambers is making a point. He is saying that often when we are in pursuit of service for Christ and trying to make a difference in the world around us, we get "tunnel vision". We start to think about our own problem to the exclusion of everything else, even God's small, still voice. In our service FOR Jesus, we begin to be devoted to the work, rather than the Lord.

Students might be tempted to use Bible homework as their quiet time. We might let our schedules become so overwhelmed with Passion groups and CAUSE ministries and outreaches and church work that we neglect our personal relationship with our Lord. Suddenly we realize we haven't cracked our Bible for a non-scholarly purpose in a few weeks. In our attempts to please God with our works, we have centered our faith around our own achievements. Such a self-centered faith is a counterfeit of a real relationship with God, which is built on His goodness, and not our own.

Response to "A Million Miles in a Thousand Years" Part 2

Prompt for 9-16

9/16: Miller “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years” p 61-120

Select at least two of the following prompts to respond to. Please keep in mind that responses should be based on the concepts presented in the book, not just your personal definition of things like change, desire, and story.

After reading Chapter 8 (This is me, Ariel, and I think they meant to write "chapter 18", so that's what I'll go with because..well...Chapter 8 was in LAST week's reading. Typo!), tell me: what do you want? Based on Chapter 13, ambition defines all stories. What is your ambition, your pursuit?

After reading Chapter 12, reflect on change. You have changed since you came to JBU: this is inevitable, because you are adapting to new experiences, and are on a new journey. Reflect on yourself and describe how you have changed within the past month.

According to Miller, we can’t live without stories, and we all follow after some story or another. What is/are some stories that have shaped your journey?

You Are What You Eat (And You Aren't What You Don't)

If someone had asked me four months ago (graduation day) what I want out of life, I probably would have said, "A slow summer." You see, I knew at the beginning of my senior year that time was going to fly past. It seemed that all of high school had flown past to that point. Why should it slow down now? I was right. It was so fast. It was gone so quickly. Sure, there were tough times. Times when time seemed to drag. Those times are my stories that directed my journey, and sometimes altered it. Those stories lead up to what I pursue, my ambitions.

Like the time we had to do a group project where we wrote a screenplay about Jonathan, Saul's son and David's best friend. I don't like group projects. I don't like my grade, my success, being in someone else's hands. Especially when that person is a D+ student. But the deadline came and went. I didn't get the grade I had wanted and, I believed (and actually still believe) I could have earned had it been a solo project. But look! I didn't die! I even learned a valuable lesson: You are what you eat. So when I was forced to eat some humble pie, I gained some humility. Granted, it didn't taste great. It was dry and crumbly. But it taught me something I couldn't have learned about myself: sometimes other people have better ideas than I have. (I actually choked a little on that part. I survived by giving myself the Heimlich on a chair. Hey, I'm still learning the "depend on others and teach them to be dependable" thing.)

Or the other time when we prepared for almost four months for the spring Easter musical, and I played the part of the narrator and sang "Via Dolorosa" solo while Jesus (my youth pastor, who was amazing) struggled up the center aisle of the auditorium. I loved every bit of it. I loved the stage. I loved the HUGE spotlight that prevented me from getting nervous on stage because I couldn't see the crowd. I loved being good at it. Maybe that was why during the second chorus of my solo the second night, I pushed a little too hard on a high note and my voice squeaked. It was the most awful thing that could have happened to my pride. I again choked on some humble pie. But even with that, I look back on that as a highlight in my high school career. I treasure it, sometimes allowing the memories to soothe my heart.

It almost hurts to know that that was five months ago. It is hard to remember that time has moved quickly since then and it still hasn't slowed. I've been in college for three weeks. But I don't FEEL like I suppose a college student should feel. I'm not overwhelmed, a product of my desire for order and efficiency in my life. I just can't bring myself to lay something off so long that I know I will be forced to produce inferior work. (The argument could be made that that didn't stop me from procrastinating in high school, but my response that is simple: There is much more at stake now. I'm not eager to blow it. Besides, what is the 'new leaf' expression for, anyways?) I don't have an extremely active social life, but neither am I constantly bored. My dorm room is neither sloppy nor extremely neat. (My roommate and I are both lazy perfectionists: preferring order, but sometimes unwilling to put forth the effort.) But maybe that isn't mediocrity, but typicality. I suppose I don't know.

All of that background to say what I want, what I pursue: excellence in my own eyes and the eyes of others. I wish it was more spiritual, more correct. I know that I should pursue excellence in the eyes of God. The cliché, over- and oft-quoted, of "when you are beautiful in God's eyes, you will be beautiful in others', too" is neither biblical nor historical. The most beautiful people in God's eyes were hated, despised, and murdered by the world around them. "Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were put to death by stoning; they were sawed in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated— the world was not worthy of them". (Hebrews 11:35-38) But knowing what you should do is not enough motivation, as Miller points out, to complete a goal. A person needs a story, something else to spur them past themselves and on to something greater. So maybe my ambition is less an ambition and more a search, a search for an epic. A search for a great story to show and tell to an audience. I've been in places where I discovered some great stories: Cuenca, Ecuador; Colby, Kansas; John Brown University. But I'm still looking for that thing, that one epic that grabs my soul and story and rips it from my white-knuckled, dead-man's grip. So my eyes are wide and searching, desiring and terrified all at the same time. I guess the only thing left is to go buy that bicycle, to cross the point of no return. To quote Jack Sparrow, "You know that feeling you get when you look over a cliff and have an urge to jump? welll....I don't have it." I suppose all that remains to be discovered is whether I will square my shoulders and take that last step over the edge.

Response to "A Million Miles in a Thousand Years"

Blog Prompt: 9/7: Miller “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years” p 1 – 60

Think about this: if your life were a movie, what would the main story be? Would you want to watch your own life?

For your blog post this week, write a scene of your life depicting a single provoking/meaningful/memorable moment. Then discuss what made it for you; what makes memories? What makes that experience stand out, for better or worse?

Blog posts should be approximately 250 words in length. You should also post two thoughtful, reflective questions (i.e., the kind without clear-cut answers). Remember that this post is due on your blog by Wednesday, September 7th.

Don't Fly Away, Wendy

I think that my life story, so far, is a story about growing up. It's about responsibility, about learning and deciding for myself what I believe. If all of the interesting aspects of my life could be compressed into a four-hour movie, I would love to watch it. Because I love to remember, to re-collect my memories. I don't want to forget, to live in blissful ignorance. At the end of my life, which I hope is a long, long ways away, I want people to say that I lived in my own place and time, that I didn't spend my life wishing I was older or younger, near or far. I want them to say that I was here.

An Ever-Present Memory, An Ever-Present Moment

    I remember when I was very young in the wintertime. It had just snowed around 12 inches, so we went outside to play in it. We dug a cave and sat in the warmer air. My dad pulled us behind the three-wheeler on an inner tube. Sometimes if we went high into the air, we would tumble off laughing and shouting. It was good to be young. My sister and I sometimes tried to push each other off. My brother went by himself; he was too big to share the tube. Then something scary that I only sort-of remember, like you remember some of your dreams, happened. My brother fell off the tube and hit his head on a piece of equipment. His face had blood on it. I don't remember if he was conscious. I just remember that Mom and Dad and Kale (my brother) went to the hospital, to the emergency room. I don't remember being there, too, so Alexi (my sister) and I must have stayed behind. It was scary. I never thought that Kale might die. I was just confused.

   It turned out that he just had a concussion, and he needed a few stitches on his nose, between his eyes. In later years, my dad said that usually that equipment had sharp, metal discs attached to the part Kale hit. Dad took them off before the winter to clean them. If he hadn't taken them off, it's very possible that the accident could have split Kale's head open.

That scene is a miracle to me. It is a reminder of God's care towards us. I know that it's just as likely that Dad wouldn't have taken those discs off. I don't mean to say that Kale was spared because of our own righteousness. I mean to say that God is compassionate. It is to His credit that my brother wasn't seriously injured. So if anyone approaches me about the story of my life, you better believe that this story will be close to the front of my mind.

Why do make-believe stories seem more interesting that real life? To whom do we (should we) credit the "miracles" of our lives?

Human Flourishing Assignment

Control: Good, Bad, or Ugly?

            In her essay “Human Flourishing”, Danielle Sallade makes some observations about the busy life of the average college student. The students are bright and enthusiastic, but they are also constantly working or studying, always trying to get things done. They pursue a career to make money, get prestige, or please their parents, instead of focusing on where their interests and talents take them. Rather than setting aside time to be with God, they study or socialize. They are always trying to be in control, trying to keep a tight grasp on their schedules.

            I’m not saying that control is a bad thing. It’s certainly better than being out of control, living a party lifestyle that leads to destruction. I have to believe, however, that there is a middle ground somewhere between a white-knuckled grip and a completely carefree attitude.

Work is a good thing, because it was made by God for us to do. If we do the work that God gives us to do, then we find a new, less hurried sense of accomplishment. Whenever we give God what we owe Him of our time, energy, and money, we find that not only is God pleased, but we are as well. We realize that it is not the paycheck that provides for us, it is our God.

            God’s desire is that we have the best that we can have, and that is not accomplished when we are over-worked. We find it when we do the work God has for us.