by Scott H. Northrup
I have the cherished privilege of working on a college campus. To me there is no more thrilling or fulfilling place to work. I love to teach and I get excited all over again each time the new semester starts, with fresh faces staring back at me in the hallowed lecture halls. It is an experience that keeps me young.
Sometimes I reflect on the kind of person I was 35 years ago when I sat where they are sitting. If only I could travel back in time and give my younger self some good advice. What would I tell myself? What lessons would it have been good to know when I was setting out on the course of my life apart from parents?
I would tell myself to associate with the faithful crowd. I hung out with the party bunch. I would tell myself to be more faithful attending classes and studying. I squeaked through most college classes doing just barely enough to get by. Small investments then would have produced huge rewards later, but I couldn't see that.
I would tell myself to faithfully attend church and develop a more intimate relationship with the Lord. I turned my back on the God of my childhood and spurned my parents' wise instruction, to my own injury.
I would tell myself to surrender totally to God and don't wait another moment. As it says in the Message Bible in Romans 6:13, "Throw yourselves wholeheartedly into God's way of doing things. Sin can't tell you how to live. " Yet I was bound and determined to do things my way, because I was the "New Intellectual" that Ayn Rand conceived.
Again, what lessons would it have been good to know? Only the simple wisdom that has always been known about life - to listen to your elders because they may know whereof they speak, and to live according to the plain and simple truths of God found in the Holy Bible.
I am so very thankful that God is a merciful heavenly Father who manages to work with the raw material of our lives, with all the mistakes and missed opportunities, and give us new chances to walk in His will. I am thankful for the blood of Jesus that cleanses us from sin, and makes us spotless in His sight. And I am thankful that there is still time to share with you my friends what an exquisite joy it is to be His child and to be called by His name - Christian. That He would be not ashamed to call me His brother is unspeakably amazing!
@ copyright 2005 by Scott H. Northrup. All rights reserved.