I feel like this happens to me all of the time, and perhaps in the peak of my breaking points. I look back in frustration at my present priorities or my perception of things, and suddenly Ecclesiastes is ringing in my ears. A lot of people find Ecclesiastes depressing. I enjoy reading it, and it brings me peace.
Today, as I was overwhelmed and frustrated, my mind wandered back to this verse:
"But as I looked at everything I had worked so hard to accomplish, it was all so meaningless—like chasing the wind. There was nothing really worthwhile anywhere." Ecc 2:11.
The average person may find discomfort or anxiety from this verse, but I find peace. It reminds me that no matter what makes sense in my mind, if it's not in God's will, it's not right. What I accomplish won't bring satisfaction like keeping God close to my heart does.
In a "go, go, go" society, take some time to stop and remember your priorities. About a month ago one of my teachers brought to my attention that I was supposed to be doing the 20 question pretests every week. Actually, she didn't bring it to my attention, I had to ask when I saw a random 0/150 in the grade book. Being a somewhat disorganized teacher, most people in the class were unaware of these assignments since they were left out of our course calendar. Anywho, since Business Statistics happens to be the WORST class to be over-loaded in, you can imagine my stress. My teacher sent an email out to everyone, apologized for the lack of communication, and then told us we had until the end of the semester to complete these pretests. Did I mention that there were 14 of them to do?
As I was thinking about how my GPA may drastically drop, how I may lose my spot on the Dean's List, and every possibly terrible outcome any college student could imagine, I managed to get these 14 pretests completed. My scores were very average, but I was happy to get them behind me with the knowledge that I worked hard. Now that I am officially on summer break, I checked on my grades and saw that the teacher decided to take these pre-tests as completion grades. REALLY? Should I be happy for the leniency or annoyed that I didn't know this?
How does this relate? We get stressed out about the things we don't entirely understand, and when we do the best we can in those situations, God makes them look like the simplest things when he perfects them for us. Then, we wonder why we didn't have this all figured out beforehand. Spare me some stress?
Obviously my school-related example was light compared to what a lot of people (including myself) go through in this life; however, think about your hardest battle. How did God come through for you? Now think of your present battle. Will he ignore this one or are you ignoring him?
Great reminder, loved this post!!
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