1. Great in your own mind
2. Potentially great
3. Formerly great
4. Comparatively great
5. Tomorrow I’ll be great
6. If only
7. I’d be great if others would just notice
8. I’ll be great if it kills me

"Some might find it surprising that I would teach a young boy about God’s wrath toward sin. But I find it surprising that any loving person would withhold this truth from another person they love. Because only when we understand God’s wrath toward sin can we realize that we need to be saved from it. Only when we hear the bad news that we’re deserving of judgment can we appreciate the good news that God, through His Son, has provided salvation and full, continuing forgiveness for our sins. Only those who are aware of God’s wrath are amazed at God’s grace."

"I have become an infomercial for God, and I don’t even use the product. I don’t want to be who I am anymore."

"It isn’t that I want to earn my own way to give something to God, it’s that I want to earn my own way so I won’t be charity.
As I drove over the mountain that afternoon, realizing I was too proud to receive God’s grace, I was humbled. Who am I to think myself above God’s charity? And why would I forsake the riches of God’s righteousness for the dung of my own ego?"

"My belief in Jesus did not seem rational or scientific, and yet there was nothing I could do to separate myself from this belief. I think Laura was looking for something rational, because she believed that all things that were true were rational. But this isn’t the case. Love, for example, is a true emotion, but it is not rational. What I mean is, people actually feel it. I have been in love, plenty of people have been in love, yet love cannot be proven scientifically. Neither can beauty. Light cannot be proved scientifically, and yet we all believe in light and by light see all things. There are plenty of things that are true but don’t make any sense. I think one of the problems Laura was having was that she wanted God to make sense. He doesn’t. He will make no more sense to me than I will make sense to an ant."

"I believe that the greatest trick of the devil is not to get us into some sort of evil but rather have us wasting time. This is why the devil tries so hard to get Christians to be religious. if he can sink a man’s mind into habit, he will prevent his heart from engaging God."

Jesus x physics, holla.

Reflecting on second semester

You know how there’s always a first for everything? Well, this semester was definitely a semester of firsts.

My first legitimately failed test. We aren’t talking Asian-fail here.

My first all-nighter. I have debated whether or not they are actually all-nighters, since I take short naps. However, I started timing how much these little intermediate naps added up to, and the hour or two they add up to are small enough to be assumed to be negligible. (Oh dear, I feel like I’m justifying the cancellation of kinetic and potential energy in a process unit.)

My first feelings of complacency upon receiving back failing quiz after failing quiz.

Needless to say, it’s been a rough semester for me. It’s been a messy fall from the old comforts of the breezy A’s of high school and 4.0 of first semester.

Throughout this all, I have to admit that my faith also grew pretty complacent. This is not something to be included in this collection of firsts, sadly, but it is still an issue, nonetheless.

I found myself justifying my poor academic performance by saying, “Oh, well, at least I’m not idolizing school.” Well, I definitely wasn’t glorifying God with my alternate usage of time, either. My ever proliferating laziness and procrastination was becoming an idol in and of itself.

Last semester, I started to really embrace the mindset that no matter my academic performance, God will use the result to glorify Him. This would be all peachy, except I started twisting this truth to fit my purposes, thinking that even a failing grade will be able to be used for His glory. While this is true, I was using this to justify my lack of hard work. It is one thing if you give it your all and fail. Though I did put forth effort and hard work into the tests that I did not do well on, I definitely was not giving it my best.

However, through my faithlessness, God is faithful. He was there when I realized that I really needed to get my act together. The mindset stayed with me, but it was returning to its original intent. I worked harder, put more hours into studying, prayed more. God willing, please allow me to turn around my grades. And if this was possible, please keep me humble, and remember to first give God the glory. And if it does not work, still give God the glory.

Well, the end of the semester is now rapidly approaching.

God bless my ChE317 professor. She definitely graded fairly, but still with a lot of grace. She dropped two homework grades and accounted for a small range of human error in quiz and test grading. I think it is fairly safe to assume that I was probably one of the people to benefit the most from the homework drops, due to my terrible homework track record in that class. And then, if our grade fell between two grade clusters, we were curved up. All of these gracious grading practices are the reason I fell into the grade cluster that I did, because the grade I had calculated the night before was very borderline. I think I still earned my grade fair and square, though my professor would have been perfectly justified if she had placed me in the lower grading cluster. (This class is graded plus/minus. I, for one, am thankful for plus/minus.)

Oh, and differential equations. God bless my diff eq professor, too. He is definitely the “kind and generous math professor” he always alludes to when we go over a particularly tricky problem in class. Thanks to his extremely reasonable tests (not necessarily easy- that was the mistake I made coming into the first test), I was able to pull myself up by studying hard for the following tests. No, I did not get an A, but I do not deserve an A. I could play the “what if” game, as in, what if I had studied hard for the first test? Yes, I probably would have been able to get an A if I had studied harder for that first test. But, while I am not justifying my lack of preparation, I have to say, nothing has humbled me and put me in my place academically as much as that failing test grade.

Grace is such a crazy thing. Whether straight from God, or manifested through the actions of people, it is always so beautiful.

I still have one more midterm and two finals to go. May I be a good steward of my time as I prepare and study for these tests. As always, praise be to God, no matter what the outcomes may be.

Day 4: Something you have never said to someone but should or wanted to.

Jesus loves you. He came down to Earth and lived a life as human as any other, except for the whole part about doing bad things. But that’s not because He was immune to bad things, or because bad things weren’t tempting. No, he didn’t sin because, though He was fully human, He was also fully God.

There came a time in His life when He had to die. Why? Because only through His death were all of our sins able to be paid for. And so he died a torturous death on the cross, all for our sins: your sins, my sins, everyone’s sins.

But wait, there’s more. Although that part is really awesome for us, since all of our sins and misdeeds were forgiven, the really exciting part is what came next.

Three days later, He rose again. Aside from the wow factor of being the only human ever to come back to life after undoubtedly dying and remaining dead for three days, this had a greater significance. His resurrection showed that Jesus Christ, God, is greater than our sins. When it came down to Jesus vs. sin, Jesus won.

So, no matter what you’ve done in your life, no matter if you despise even the very idea of a God- He loves you, oh so much. More than you could ever imagine. If you just have faith that Jesus died on the cross for your sins, and commit your life to following Christ, your sins can have a relationship with God!