grace
It’s been a while since I’ve been on here. Haven’t posted since Urbana (‘cept for the post about the annonymous offering, could not not share that, if you know what I mean). But yeah, just been a while. Part of the reason for that is because it’s been an interesting 2 months in my life.
It’s been interesting because I’ve kind of entered a new transistional period in my life. The reason for that is I’m not going to be graduating this year as originally planned. I screwed up my first semester, failed a course, and long story short, I’ll be back in school for another year in September. Now, you may be thinking, “that sucks, that’s too bad,” and yeah, I guess it does suck a little, but really, it’s just another learning experience, I’ve just got to learn from this and keep going. People have been saying I’ve taken this pretty well (one friend actually seemed to take the news worse than I did when she first heard), and I guess I have, but what else can you really do? Getting down on myself, feeling depressed, or just complaining about it is going to get me nowhere. I’ve got to keep going and know that good things will come from this.
As I said, this has been a learning experience for me. One obvious thing I’ve learned is the importance of discipline, not to slack off. But another thing I learned was unexpected: grace, getting what I don’t deserve. If you’ve ever talked to me about my parents, you may know that they’re really good parents and I’ve been blessed so much by them. But with this whole school thing, I’ve just learned how lucky I am to have parents like them. When I first told them about my failing the course and repeating this year, I wasn’t expecting them to yell at me or anything, but I also wasn’t expecting their response. I was half-expecting that they might say something like, “we’re disappointed” (which is one of the worse things you could ever hear from a parent), but they didn’t even do that. What they said just floored me, they said, “we’re still proud of you and still support you in whatever you do.” Wow. They’re still proud of me? What do they have to be proud of? I screwed up, didn’t put in the effort, did what they’ve taught me not to do, and they’re still proud of me? It was a glimpse of what it’ll feel like standing in front of God and hearing the words, “well done good and faithful servant.” Totally don’t deserve it. Grace, pure and simple.
Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found;
Was blind, but now I see.
Heya Jon,
Haven’t seen you in ages, and my heart goes out to you in terms of your schoolwork.
I remember my 4th year – fall term. I was in huge down time spiritually, emotionally, going thru a sort of ‘valley of the shadow of death’… one of the courses I was taking that had a lot of lab work–I just stopped trying in the middle of the term: stopped going into the lab to work, stopped doing any of the work. For the final, I barely studied, only the morning of basically… and came out thinking that I likely failed the course.
Right after Christmas, checking my marks–I was quite surprised to find that I passed the course with a D-. Not the greatest mark, but I passed. I did not deserve it at all–but I knew there was a purpose for such Divine grace. It could have happened either way; I could have failed, but God in His sovereign plan gave me otherwise.
May you also learn and grow in knowing God as your Father rather than judge in this time of grace.
Sola gratia,
-Alex
14:08, March 12, 2007 at 14:08
good post j.chant! just keep swimmin’
and YAY for understanding and supportive parents!!
16:52, March 13, 2007 at 16:52