rebelling against low expectations
“Father, make of me a crisis man. Bring those I contact to decision. Let me not be a milepost on a single road; make me a fork, that men must turn one way or another on facing Christ in me.” – Jim Elliot The desire of Jim Elliot’s heart was that people would come into contact with the living, loving God when they met him. He wanted people to see Jesus in and through his life. He longed that...
“Tell the world these things we are going through in Nigeria.” A twenty-eight-year-old mother of three, Aisha was raped–just because someone saw a Bible in her home and assumed her husband was a pastor. Her story and plea on the Open Doors website broke my heart. We hear these horror stories every once in a while in our Christian circles when someone feels the need to remind us of how good...
I was born into a culture that coddles teenagers, so I forget that many of the people God used for his purposes were my age. Daniel was a youth when Nebuchadnezzar captured him. His three friends–Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego–were likely teenagers when they refused to exalt the king’s idol. I’m eighteen and I’ve never been kidnapped. I’ve never been forced to defy my God. I’ve never...
As a Christian and a young woman, I am an ardent and dedicated pro-lifer. I’ve seen all kinds of debates regarding ‘women’s rights’ and feminism. I’ve seen the pro-choice tweets and posts that try to justify abortion. But on this point I am determined–the rights of the unborn and innocent need to be protected. Yet, I can’t help but be a little disappointed in how we’re trying to go about...
I crashed the computer program in less than two minutes. I’m not talking about the kind of crash where you can just exit out of the program. I pushed the wrong combination of buttons, and the computer screen completely froze up. After initially panicking, I finally restarted the computer, desperately hoping it would regain its sanity. How did I end up in this predicament? Well, I was sitting in...
I don’t bake. Now there is a reason for that and the reason is simply this: I’m bad at it. Like really, really bad at it. I knew this when I decided it would be a fantastic idea to try making a homemade pecan pie. After all, what could go wrong? I mean, the recipe I found didn’t look that hard. All I really had to do was follow the directions. So that’s exactly what I set...
My 9th-grade high school band class had quite a variety of people. Some were dedicated to music, others only passed as musicians if you squinted a little. I like to think I fell somewhere in the middle. Despite the occasional dying-goose-like squawks, I played the clarinet decently. Not as well as the hardcore music student who sat beside me, of course. But certainly not as badly as the ‘I-only...
Lately, my evening reading has been a linguistics textbook. I’m sure you’ve already figured this out: I’m taking summer classes, getting some extra credits so I can keep up my GPA and maybe graduate early. Except, I’m not. Words are fascinating to me: the way they work, how you can string them together to form sentences and create meaning, and especially how they relate to certain branches of...
Fitting an arrow to the string, the crown prince took aim and released. The arrow flew through the air, landing a great distance away. A small boy–his servant–hurried to pick it up and bring it back to him. “Is not the arrow beyond you?” he called after the boy. As he said those words, he remembered his excellent education, his training with a sword and bow, his preparation to be a...
From blue crayon sketches to squeaky violin recitals to Disney murder mystery novels, hobbies have long been a part of my life. I’ve hated the hours of practice, hated the pieces that went in the trash, hated the wasted time. But if I could reclaim that time for another purpose, I wouldn’t. In fact, I’d probably invest still more into my hobbies. My sketches may not be featured in some New York...
rebelling against low expectations
