Take me out to the Ball Game...

What do you think when you hear the song take me out to the ball game? Do you think of the Seventh Inning Stretch of a Blue Jays game, a memory of playing baseball with a parent, the most annoying song ever created or the best day of your life?

This past Saturday I was at a Blue Jays game with some good friends of mine. It was cold, I had a headache and there was an annoying child sitting next to my friend but despite that, it was still a fairly good time. The Jays won in the second extra inning, and it was by a home run. The Jays got 4 home runs that game out of the 5 runs they had. I love baseball, but there was video played during the game that had a player talking about the game of baseball and how that is there life. I though about how my life is my faith in Jesus Christ. When I thought more about this I thought of the wins and the losses. We each have these in our daily lives, but if we are living fully for Christ then although we may fall and fail in the end we will have ultimate victory in Christ who had ultimate victory over death.

2 Timothy 4:7 says "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith". As we continue through each day, fighting the battle that is set out before us, let us praise God in our victory and in our losses. Let us praise him in our struggles and in our happiness, because He is with us and it has already been won. Let us give to God our all, so that we can fully live with the Holy Spirit as our guide, and fully live for God.
- T.

This is Life, thats for sure...

Well SLT week ended, the new students moved in, MEGA started and ended and classes began. I can hardly believe it. I would say that it was a success, very tiring but a success. There were three main emotions I was feeling the whole time. Excitement, Fear, and Anxiety.

Excitement happened as the SLT moved in, and the new students came, it was a great time to catch up. There was so many students and a general feeling of excitement all over the campus. Which led to my next feeling of Anxiety.

With Anxiety there were two things, the thought that there was way more people on campus than I was used to and my space seemed to be taken over, however this is a good thing, just hard to handle at first. The next was that my usb stick with all my work on my Distance Ed. stopped working and I lost everything, and so now I'm scrambling to get it done in a month and a half in order to pass the course.

Fear happened Monday morning when I woke up just before my first class of what should be my last year at Emmanuel. I have fear that I wont graduate but I need to have the attitude that I will, not be fearful that I wont. I am fearful about many things but in order to overcome them, I must face them.

I know that even though things seem overwhelming right now, soon enough this year will be over and I will look back wondering where the time went. So until then I will live each moment to the fullest, doing my best at everything, and loving with all I am.

- T.

Exaustion!

In the book Margin, it talks about progress and what that has done to our society. Progress has left us in exhaustion. We are no longer able to take control of progress but progress takes control of us.

Well the summer is over. As I finished up my last day at work today I thought about how quickly the summer went by. It seemed like it just started, and yet at the same time like it has been going on forever. I am exhausted from everything. I have yet to even start what will be one of the most challenging year yet. Between school, co-presidency, my internship, work (possibly 2 jobs), and friends I don’t know how I will even have time to breath. My heart aches at the thought of it. I wonder what I have got myself into, I know that I cannot do this alone; I must rely on God’s strength and not my own.

George MacDonald a Scottish author and poet once wrote that “It is our best work that God wants, not the dregs of our exhaustion. I think he must prefer quality to quantity”. When I read this I thought of everything I’m doing this year, and I want to do it with quality. I wish I could look at all I’m doing and say with assurance that I can do this with quality but I’m afraid that I will gain the attitude of just “getting by”. This is not living out our theme for the year; this is not living full stride. And it’s most defiantly not trusting in God to renew my strength (Isaiah 40:31). As the summer comes to an end and the school year begins, I hope to learn new ways to live this out.

-T.