Monday, November 22, 2010

Life

One of our journal questions asked us to finish this quote: "Life is like a..." To me, life is like a Japanese game show, you never know what's going to happen. Despite the slightly inappropriate nature of this quote, I think it is completely right. In my experience, life can change in a heartbeat. This doesn't just apply to my observations at school or at home, but in every area of life. In this broken world that we live in, one day people can love you, and the next they'll hate you. We will experience problems and troubles in our lives, but we will also have those great, incredible moments that we'll share with the special people we love and are closest to us. While life is full of uncertainty about the future, the one thing that is constant and remains the same is Jesus Christ. He is the rock we can depend on when everything else is shaking apart. While we may not know what will happen in life, God knows, and that's good enough for me.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Static/Dynamic Character

One of our journal questions in the past week or so posed this simple statement: If my life was a book or a movie, would I be a static character or a dynamic one? What do these words even mean? A static character is one who, over the course of the entire story, remains relatively unchanged from the events that take place. A dynamic character is one that does become changed as a result of everything he or she experiences. This character may learn something that affects their life, in a good way or a bad one. If I were in a movie or a book, I would consider myself a dynamic character.
I would hope that I have changed somewhat since I was a baby or a toddler, when I didn't know anything else other than to be selfish. My parents played a huge role in teaching me to be kind, to be compassionate, to care about others, even as a little kid, and their strong faith in Christ was the driving force behind this. As Proverbs 22:6 says, "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it."
After growing up a little bit, I started to find things out on my own, not just take whatever my parents said as fact. This included mundane things like choosing how late to stay up each night or when to do my homework. But the biggest thing that I wanted to decide on my own was whether or not I really believed in everything my parents, my pastor, and my school said about Jesus Christ and Christianity. I didn't really pay attention to making this decision until junior high, and I experienced Spiritual Emphasis Week for the first time. I began to wonder if there actually was something to this, and although I didn't make my final decision to follow Christ until much later, this started me on my lifelong walk with God. If this was a novel, I would consider the main character, me, as a very dynamic character. These are just a few examples of how I've changed, learned valuable lessons, matured, and grown throughout my life. I know that the book of my life isn't over yet, and there are still plenty of chapters left for this character to grow, experience new things, and mature even more.