Tag: Present

Day Twenty-Tw0: What do you collect?

In all honestly, I don’t really collect much at this point of my life. When I was little, I collected rocks, and I’m pretty sure at one point, I collected buttons, but within the past few years, I’ve mostly stopped collecting things. But, there is one thing that I still collect.

Memories. 

As I’ve been searching for a job and procrastinating CLEP tests, this is something that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. At this point in my life, I have both middle and high school behind me—two stages of life that I believe a person grows the most—which has given me a chance to do a lot of reflecting. What has shaped the person I’ve become? What made me who I am today? How is my past shaping my present and future even as I write?

Recently, I read a book by bestselling author, Karen Kingsbury, called Remember. In short, the theme of this book was how our memories shape us, and how our pasts help us move into the future. Remembering how God has walked with me through tough transitions in the past gives me faith for the future—faith that in the midst of the confusing college years, God will work everything out in the end. 

God has been faithful to me throughout my life. He brought me from an insecure preteen to a confident young adult, and from an experience that jaded my faith to a freshly ignited faith. He’s brought me this far, and I know that He has more planned for me.

Growing up is never easy. Oftentimes, it seems that once we figure out one stage of life, it’s time for us to move on to the next. Just as I was starting to get a grip on being in middle school, it was time for me to move to high school. Likewise, just as I was figuring out how to be a high schooler, I graduated and moved onto college. Change is inevitable, but holding onto memories, while learning into the moment, can help us remember God’s faithfulness. 

No stage of life is too big for God. Like the lyrics to the old Britt Nicole song, All This Time, God has been walking with us throughout our whole life. He has never left us and He never will leave us.

All this time, from the first tear cried, to today’s sunrise, God was there. He was always there…He’s been walking with us all this time. 

If we remember this truth, we can get through anything.

What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:

“For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”[a]
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,[b] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. – Romans 8:31-39