Hostage

Every day people say things to me that go in one ear and right out the other. Like when my parents say, “Be careful!” before I leave anywhere in the car or anything my teacher says that is preceded with “This will not be on the test.” Or that time the custodian at school said to me, “Don’t sit there—wet paint!” Yeah, wish I’d listened that time.

But every now and then I hear something that really resonates with me, and I make an effort to remember it and carry it with me in my life. Such was the case with a recent sermon series at our church called, “Hostage.” It was all about things that hold us back in our lives and prevent us from living the life God had intended for us, things that truly hold us hostage. That can look like a lot of different things, and many of those destructive habits and addictions were discussed during the course of the series. People shared testimonies of how God had delivered them from addiction to alcohol, powerful stories were shared of people...

Roughin It For Jesus

For years now, our church has taken a crew of people to a very rustic campground in northern Saskatchewan to do a wilderness camp and Vacation Bible School program with children from the First Nations’ communities nearby. For five years now, I’ve been blessed to go with the church and do this. We all camp in tents, bathe in the lake, and spend the week just trying to show love and explain this concept of Jesus to these children, many of whom come from the most dysfunctional, broken homes you could imagine. In fact, only a few days into camp a van pulled into the campground to collect two of the kids that had come to camp. It was Children’s Services coming to collect two brothers whose mom had been deemed unfit to keep them. It was a devastating reminder of what these kids go through every day.

All of the youth from our church that attended the camp are assigned “Tent Buddies” that we get to know and watch over throughout the week. I was assigned to the oldest boys that came...

Forty Days in Exile

Okay, so maybe not “in exile,” but that’s how it felt for a while. You see, at the beginning of March I gave up my biggest addiction for forty days—Facebook. I had just come back from a retreat at church in which the speaker had challenged us all to give up our most time-consuming, unessential habit for the next 40 days and use that time to grow closer to the Lord. As our speaker that weekend was explaining this concept to us, in my mind I tried to justify giving up other things—such as reading, schoolwork, trips to the dentist, etc. But I kept coming back to Facebook. I realized that at this point in my life, no one activity consumes more of my life than it. Pathetic, huh?

I have just over a week until I meet my goal. And honestly, it’s been difficult at times (Once again—pathetic, I know.), especially at the beginning. I was having serious withdrawals! But as I near the end of these forty days, I’m grateful for having done it, and I’ve learned a lot.

I’ve often heard people say that any activity...

Unworthy Servants

It’s funny how sometimes we remember just completely random things. One of those things for me was the second day of Vacation Bible School at Long Hollow in 2007. The theme was “The Sports Galaxy,” and I was helping with the drama.

I LOVE doing the VBS dramas, but the past two years I have done it, it has also been one of the most stressful weeks of the year because often times we ended up memorizing our lines the day of the event. I remember on the second day in particular, we were all really stressed and felt that we just weren’t ready to go out there. Finally it was almost time for us to go on and the ladies of the Praise Team asked us if we wanted to join them in prayer. They did that thing where somebody opens, somebody closes and whoever can just go in the middle as they feel led. And I remember Sarah, who was also doing the drama, said thank you for the privilege it is to serve.

Well the praise team was comprised entirely of women, as was the drama team – minus me – and of course they all just...

Friends After All

Recently, I’ve made a new friend of sorts. I love it when that happens! Except in this case, I’ve known this friend for several years, but it’s only recently we started talking. I remember the first time I met her. It was the first day of Junior English class; she had just moved in from out of state.

I quickly found out that her experiences, thoughts, and opinions were vastly different from my own, and for this reason I initially had just written her off. She later revealed that, in her mind, she did the same to me. But in recent months, we started conversing again; but this time it was, interestingly enough, our differences that actually brought us together. Our back and forth began during the election season as we engaged in spirited discussion about the state of the race, our choice in candidates, etc. But through that debate, we both surprised ourselves to discover that there was a host of issues we did agree on, and that even when we did disagree—that wasn’t any grounds to not be friends.

This...

Reaching Back

Last week at the “Campus Outreach” service at Tennessee Tech a student shared a moving story about a family he knew that recently chose to adopt internationally. The family had told the student about how hard it was going to the orphanage in China and seeing the poor conditions these infants were being raised in, but said that what was even harder, was having to leave the baby that they wanted to adopt there in those conditions after first seeing her, as they couldn’t take the baby home with them upon their first visit.

But finally, those deserving parents did get to take that baby home. To start a new life, and give the child the opportunity to grow up with more opportunities, a promising future, and parents that would love her dearly. But they relayed to the student speaking that night at the service that as they drove off from the orphanage, where the baby lived in squalor and had hardly ever been held until the prospective parents came, the infant reached back behind her and cried as if not wanting to...

Roommate Wars

As my first semester of school at Tennessee Tech University draws to a close, I continue to learn new things about managing this whole concept called “college.” One new realization being that there is no “busy work” to boost your grade. The format in all of my classes is three tests and a final. The days of easy “worksheets” and “homework grades” or my favorite—the “attendance grade,” that some teachers gave just for showing up, are gone. Another thing I’ve learned is that even if you’re a fairly organized and successful student, there will inevitably be those occasions where you are up all night working on a paper or studying for a test. Such was the case with me last week. Except our library closes at midnight, so where was I until 4:30 in the morning the next day? Big O’s Donuts (the only place open twenty-four hours in a five-mile radius) where I worked on an essay for my British Literature class and chilled with all of the police officers on break getting their jelly-filled donuts and coffee.

But...

Memories from Canada, Eh?

Photo by Jonathan Frank

For several years now, I have been privileged with the opportunity to take a mission trip with my church to Saskatchewan, Canada every summer. We pay an astronomical amount of money (it translates roughly to two months of paychecks from my time frying chicken at the ol’ Chick-fil-A) to go to a campground to lead a vacation Bible school for children. We stay in the middle of nowhere and sleep in tents while constantly battling the forces of mosquitoes on steroids and biting flies—but something about the trip keeps drawing me back year after year.

The first year I went on this trip, we took a van load of people an hour down the road to the worship service at the church we partner with in Saskatchewan. The church was rather small and most of its members were senior citizens. The only musical instruments they had were an organ and a piano. Worship was led by an elderly lady with the shrillest operatic vibrato you will ever hear. Truth be told, I only went because following the service...

Can You Hear Me Up There?

Here I am almost two months into my “college experience” as everyone over the age of forty likes to call it, and I still couldn’t be happier with my choice in a school. It is the perfect distance from home—about an hour and a half (which allows for space and time away from home, but I can still go back on a whim), I’ve met a lot of great people, and I enjoy my classes. My one complaint, however, is that sometimes I do feel a little “lost in the crowd.” It is a big transition to go from my high school of just under 1,000 people to a college of about 10,000.

I was fairly involved in high school. I knew most of the students, teachers, and our principal, and had gotten involved in a few clubs and activities (i.e. show choir and mock trial—yeah, I was way cool) but at college the idea of trying to get involved with anything seemed kind of daunting, and it’s been difficult to get to know my teachers in classes of 150+ people. In fact, come to think of it, I’m not entirely sure any of them could tell you my full...

In The Desert

Last summer Tennessee had one of the worst droughts in recent history. It was crazy! We lost all kinds of plants and shrubs; no one was allowed to wash their cars or their yards—and as a result, everyone’s grass turned brown. Everything was just so dry. Michael W. Smith even had a public service announcement come out on our Christian radio station asking everyone to pray that God would end the drought, and in the background they were playing this MercyMe song called “Bring The Rain”—I found it slightly amusing. But if I’m honest, my heart much of the time reflects the conditions during that awful drought. Dry. Barren. Turned off to God. There are days when I don’t feel like praying, or going to church, or worshipping God, and on the flip side of that—there are days when I am seeking God but I feel as though I can’t find Him.

It is during these times I must remember that God is still God, and that no matter what my circumstances, in every season of my life, He deserves all of my praise. Even when my...