Eternally Minded

Lately I’ve been reading 1 Timothy, a letter the apostle Paul wrote to a young pastor in Ephesus. As I read, I appreciated the wisdom and insight that Paul had; so I laboured on condensing the book into key passages that would help me remember the gist of the letter. I slightly paraphrased those passages, but sometimes I would copy word-for-word what the text said because I didn’t want to lose the meaning that was conveyed with the sentence structure and word choice. The idea behind this exercise was to go further into the text and really get a feel for what Paul was saying. By doing this, I learned many things I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. One thing that stuck out to me was the mentality of application Paul had near the end of the book. He’d say something like, “Set an example for the family of believers in your speech, the way you carry and conduct yourself, in your faith, and in your purity of heart” (paraphrase). I would think, “Hmmm. What does that look like for me? What changes...

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...