Eternally Minded

Loneliness can be a heavy cross. Someone doesn't even need to be alone to be lonely; sometimes a lonely soul can hurt the most when physically surrounded by people. There may not always be a solution to acute loneliness, as it may have been brought upon by many different sources: physical abandonment, someone moving away - maybe you yourself has moved away, or the ending of a relationship. There isn't a lot of comfort to be found sometimes. God alone understands our pain - the ache, the longing, the sorrow - as you uniquely feel it and deal with it. If you're like me, then you bury your hurts. But God sees where I bury it, He knows - and can define my feelings better than I can. I have to remind myself to turn to Christ, because it's what we were made to do: As the loincloth clings to the waist of a man, so I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah cling to Me, declares the Lord, that they might be for Me a people, a name, a praise, and a glory...

Acing a test. Writing a book. Finishing your homework. Coordinating an event. Cooking a meal. Graduating from high school or college. Completing a good workout. Cleaning the bathroom. Finishing a Bible study workbook. Doing the dishes. Figuring out a new dance routine. What do all of these things have in common? Think about it for a minute. They’re all hard. Or at least, require some amount of work. Why am I talking to you about hard things? Well, I think that we (teenagers, that is) should do more hard stuff. That’s because they push us persevere in doing the next hard thing. Hard things are good for us. But guess what: there aren’t a lot of young people doing hard things anymore. We’re not getting much encouragement from today’s culture to do things that are actually worth doing. Because doing those things is for older people with the expertise, the education, the resources, and the stubborn perseverance to do so. . . Right? Wrong! Those people aren’t the only ones who are capabl...