Trusting in The Lord

A common thread between our talks this quarter has come back to one thing: trusting in the Lord. It's a concept that truly fills my heart at this time in particular, because like other students, it is difficult not to feel burdened with classes, with searching for summer internships or opportunities, and with thoughts of the future and life past our college walls.

After being graced by three wonderful snow days this past week, I'll admit it was a struggle to return to "reality". It was the ultimate case of the Mondays. I found myself forgetting the exact thing we talked about at The Back Porch (a meeting of intentional conversation for students living in the Greek System at UW) the week before. At that meeting, we discussed our identity within school, and the fact that ultimately school is preparing us for life afterwards, in which we will go live out God's purpose for us in the world. Therefore, God is molding us through school (as though pruning the branches in John:15), and school is then a type of worship to God.

Rather than remembering this, I felt overwhelmed. I was going back to studying, working, preparing for lurking midterms, and juggling living in a sorority, building relationships, and fulfilling academic commitments. I was going back to "reality". But then something stopped me from feeling this way. You see, I put reality in quotation marks because my reality is more than my activities or my day-to-day routine. My reality is that I have a God who loves me and who placed me here, right here in this moment, to live into His calling. My reality is that I have a God that picks me up when I am struggling and graces me with more than I could ever imagine and gives me people in my life that are to me, physical representations of his love from above.

Then, suddenly, I remembered the verse that God sent to me on the first day of 2012. For some reason, the words Proverbs 3:5 came to my mind as I was about to go to sleep, and they kept repeating. Not knowing Proverbs 3:5 by heart, I later looked it up and found it to say "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, do not depend on your own understanding".

It is so tempting in this world that often overwhelms us to lean away from God in times of struggle. However, if we just hold on tighter, He shows us His light. We must then avoid our tendency to look inward in difficult moments, to focus only on ourselves and miss the bigger picture. Because if we just stop and zoom out for one moment, we see that we are so small in God's giant universe -- but He has more love for us than the universe combined, and He has placed us at an exact pinpoint in the universe for a reason.

From that pinpoint comes another, and another after that. Because God is composing a journey for us, the destinations of which are His to decide. After all, Jeremiah 29:11-14 says "'For I know the plans I have for you' declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. 'I will be found by you' declares the Lord, 'and will bring you back from captivity'".

This was in Jeremiah's letter to the exiles, but I think it applies in any condition. It truly encompasses what God has in mind for each of us, and his desire for us to draw close to him and follow him always.

As for prayers this week, please pray for us as we continue to trust in and follow the Lord and pray for those that feel as though they are in captivity, that they will find the Lord and he will give them strength.

Christina Watson (Student Leader)