[examen] My Last Teenage Summer.

Well, wow.

Summer is coming to a close, and it's time to look back.
This will be my last summer as a teenager. It feels like there is still so much more to learn, so much more to experience...like so much of life has already passed me by. People tell me that these years, both coming and past, are going to be the best of my life. I find that strange, because most of these years will be spent trying to figure out my life. How exactly is that fun? But that's another story.

I've learned a lot this summer.

• I learned about patience, trust, honesty, the importance of good friends... but the one I found the most important was how to seek God in the hardest times, the times where you wonder what His plan is for your life. The times where you don't even have words to describe the cry of your heart. The times where you wonder if there is a God that hears you at all. I realized that He was, is, and will always be there. Always. 

• This summer I relearned how to pray. I realized that I was far from a perfect Christian, and that I needed God's help just as much as every other sinner in the world.

• I realized I wasn't, and will never be, "Superman"; that I can't fix everyone's problems. I learned how to really listen. I learned how to sit by someone when they are hurting. I learned how to be honest with my own feelings. 

• I learned what it meant to love someone. I realized that love is an effort, an action, and that love is not some blind force, but a part of the way God made us; therefore, it's something to be treasured and treated with care. I learned that love is something you show as well as something you feel. Something you work towards and less of something you leave to chance. Something that glorifies God and builds up the other person. 

• I learned to see myself as valuable, not based on the perceptions of the world, but from the opinion of the Father who created me, and sees me as forever precious and beautiful.

I wish I could just throw all my feelings about this summer onto this keyboard and type it out onto here...but it's impossible. How can you type feelings; memories; tears; or laughter? Who can write a smile onto a webpage? Trying to craft these emotions into something tangible is a task best left done to the most skilled of writers...I am but a student who posts ideas and thoughts mainly from his heart; occasional input from his mind, and counsel from the Father Almighty. 

I wonder when I look back on this note, 2, 3, even 5 years from now, where will I be? What would I have accomplished? What will God have brought me through? What will God bring me into?

Like I said, this is my last teenage summer. Adulthood is already upon me, and I'm still not 100% sure who I am. I'm sure of this though:

God isn't through with me yet. If I keep seeking Him, it is there I will find my own soul; my identity. My... me.

So, God.

Where to? Take me where you want me. Your servant is listening.

--Jeffrey Chidiebere Ekeanyanwu

Psalm 71.

"Why do bad things happen to the best of people? Why is there suffering, shame, hurt, evil; if God is so omnipotent, so omnipresent, if He supposedly LOVES us SO much...

Why doesn't he stop it from happening? 

Where is He?"


I can't even begin to tell you how many times I've wondered that. Even as a Christian who believes that Jesus bought me eternal life and washed away my sin on the cross, I still struggle with it. 


Let me share with you something I found in my Bible a long time ago that I keep going back to.

The reality of pain and brokenness is all around us. We see it every day on the news and in our school hallways. But suffering isn't just "out there". It hits home, too. We Jesus-followers aren't protected in spiritual Bubble Wrap, kept safe from danger, tragedy, and heartache. Sometimes our suffering is intensely personal. When that happens, if can really rock our faith. It can feel like the pain is destroying us. And we're not alone in that feeling. "I am exhausted from crying for help; my throat is parched. My eyes are swollen with weeping, waiting for my God to help me," David wrote in Psalm 69:3. This wasn't just a minor bad day. David, like we often do, was hurting badly. And what about Job? His life was completely destroyed and God sat by, watching it all happen. When Job demanded answers from God, God didn't give them. Instead God answered Job with more questions. (see Job 38:1-42:6).  

It feels that way for us sometimes when we look at the pain in our lives and in twh world around us. Why does God allow little children to die of malnutrition? Why does God let cancer rot out a loved one's bones? Why doesn't God stop suicide bombers or dictators or wars? Simple answers don't work with questions like these. Sometimes we're left like Job getting our questions "answered" with more questions: Who is God-- you or me? Will you trust me? Will you serve me? Will you choose to help the hurting, the sick, and the dying in my name? Will you sacrifice your own wants and desires in order to show love and empathy to those who are suffering? 

God doesn't give us an easy answer for why we suffer. Instead he gave us his Son who suffers with us (see Isaiah 53). God's love in Christ goes with us through our deepest pain and our most difficult circumstances. So, "does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity or are persecuted, or hungry, or desitute, or in danger, or threatened with death" (Romans 8:35) It can feel that way sometimes, but the author of Romans answers his own question: "No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us."