Time for a Study Break?

Your brain is tired. You need a break. We're here for you.
Websites you should have visited by now, but just in case, let us help you waste some valuable study time with:


awkwardfamilyphotos.com
despair.com
stuffchristianslike.net


Just promise you won't forget to finish studying later.

A Matter of Perspective

My friend Phil has cancer.

He’s had some different treatments with varying effectiveness and success, but now the cancer isn’t responding to any drugs. Without coming out and saying it, it’s like people are implying that his days are numbered. But since no one is saying that out loud, they’re certainly not venturing a number. At least not to me.

See, Phil has a kind of cancer that often kills a patient in about 6 months. But he was diagnosed a year ago. So while friends and family are thanking God for the gift of every extra day with him, it’s also like a dark cloud is hanging over each and every one of those days.

Happy Thanksgiving!

It’s finally here. Thanksgiving break… a few days off for your brain and your body. In between all your giving thanks (and please do remember that part), here’s a little Thanksgiving-inspired humor. Enjoy your break!

Jim Gaffigan: "Thanksgiving. It's like we didn't even try to come up with a tradition. The tradition is, we overeat. 'Hey, how about at Thanksgiving we just eat a lot?' 'But we do that every day!' 'Oh. What if we eat a lot with people that annoy us?'"

Stephen Colbert: "Thanksgiving is a magical time of year when families across the country join together to raise America's obesity statistics. Personally, I love Thanksgiving traditions: watching football, making pumpkin pie, and saying the magic phrase that sends your aunt storming out of the dining room to sit in her car."

I Don't Want To Go Home

I am not saying that writing (or reading) this is easy, but for me it tells much of the truth.

Life is not fair, and often the place that should be the easiest, the most welcoming, is not. Do you find yourself putting off plans, or not finishing certain projects, or even committing to something else entirely so you do NOT have to go home from college? That was me, and to some extent is still me (although these days the trip home is more like an 11 hour drive; not your normal weekend getaway).

Waiting

I’ve been doing a lot of waiting lately.

There’s been a lot of waiting on hold on the phone. Waiting for replies to emails, voicemails, faxes, other messages. Waiting in waiting rooms. Waiting for test results. Waiting for the great idea I need to complete (OK, start) a project. Waiting for time to work on that project. Waiting, of course, for three small children to be ready to leave the house… on time, if we’re lucky.

Probably you’ve been waiting a lot lately too. It happens to all of us. It’s like a cycle in our lives. We hurry. We wait. We hurry. We wait. And I’ve realized, at least for now, that waiting can make you patient. It can make you strong. Or it can make you crazy.

Do you see what I see?

How do you see yourself?  How do others see you? How does GOD see you?

A few Saturdays ago as I was preparing to go out and do the yard work while the temperature was below 100 degrees, my wife came to me and said there was a situation in the house.  What on earth did that mean? I go inside to find my 10-year-old daughter locked in the front bath. Well she wasn’t actually locked in because both sides of the door knob rotated.  Something inside the handle must have broken. No big deal.  I had broken into many a door in my life (no need to spread that around) and felt sure that a library card would quickly free my daughter.

Why bother with church?

“And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.”

Hebrews 10:24,25

The “college experience” is a delicate balance of class, study, campus involvement, other extra curricular activities, and trying to maintain a social life. Students walk around stressed out and severely sleep deprived. They become so caught up trying to survive the college whirlwind that their spiritual lives take the backburner. Having a time to meet with the Lord daily takes effort. Free time on the weekends is highly coveted. Facing the daunting task of finding a local church to become involved in becomes just one more thing to do, and one more thing to be procrastinated. If students do manage some church shopping, they try to remain unnoticed on the back row, comfortably uninvolved, and sadly unfulfilled by the wonderful things that a community of believers has to offer.

Get ready to see the world!

There is a lot to be said for settling down in one place, putting down roots, and flourishing in the place where you are. College is a great time to do this—to grow both as a person and in relationships with those around you. Take advantage of the opportunities that four years of relative consistency will give you! At the same time, in college it’s sometimes easy to take this to the extreme and get so involved in the campus bubble that the rest of the world sort of disappears. The word I want to use for this is “tragic”… although that might be overstating it just a bit. Maybe.

Who do you think you are?

You’re midway through the first semester of the year.  A lot of the newness has worn off, replaced with the busyness of everyday life, assignments, tests, and activities. At some schools, rush has already happened, replaced by pledge pins and people in bright new letters; at other schools, you’re waiting for the start of next semester to go Greek, with this semester full of preview parties and meet-and-greets. No matter where you are, you have no doubt been inundated with opportunities to join up with other students: clubs, Bible studies, honor societies, leadership organizations, student government, intramural teams—the list goes on and on. Hopefully you’ve found a place in one, many, or all of them, filling your schedule with too many activities to count and your life with a host of new friends.

Having a stressful week? Repeat after me…

I will not be a student forever.

I will not be a student forever.

I will not be a student forever.

I will not be a student forever.

I will not be a student forever.

Don’t Forget About Me

Keeping One’s Perspective When So Much Is Vying for Our Attention

Distractions. Whatever form they take, they present a challenge for all of us, no matter what stage of life we’re in. One that seems to be getting significant press currently concerns texting while driving. A billboard in north Fort Worth discourages it. A member of the Texas Rangers baseball team is on the radio advising against it. We’re dangerous weapons behind the wheel of a car, and so are the people sharing the road with us. So the message is: Take care of the task at hand—arriving at our destination in one piece. When our attention is taken away from that and onto making sure our best friend knows what we did today or someone else knows when we’ll be home, well, that just invites disaster.

Hooray!!!

Slam! The sippy cup lands on the table. Two giant gray-green eyes look up at me and then around the table as chubby hands start to silently clap together. On cue, everyone else in the room jubilantly applauds and cheers. This situation repeats itself about 75 times every meal in our house. Wesley, almost 15 months, is very proud of the fact that he can put his cup on the table (instead of hurl it to the floor) and receive affirmation for this difficult task. As his mother, I am the most boisterous of his supporters in all things: for the moment, gross motor skills.

Getting to Know Your Professors

One of the great things I remember about going to college was the interaction with friends. It was always nice to spend time with fellow students just talking, laughing and sharing. However, there is another group of people on campus who care about your success at college also. And if you are willing to invest some time with them, they are willing to invest time with you. Most of the professors at the Universities close to us want students to really learn and succeed.  

Finding a Local Church

I believe establishing a church home is one of the most important things you can do during college. While I am a huge advocate of campus ministries and was an active member of TCU’s Christian sorority HIS (He Is Sufficient) and the BSM (Baptist Student Ministry), organizations on campus are no substitute for church.

The church members you connect with are able to provide spiritual guidance, support, and encouragement that you may not find in a campus ministry where all the fellow members are your same age and in your same walk in life. In addition, the relationships you form will, in turn, provide accountability and challenges that help you grow.

Open Letter to a College Freshman

Congratulations on beginning your first year of college! You’ve worked so hard to get to this point, and you have so much to look forward to. The next few years will be full of fun, learning, friendship, hard work, and exploration. I’m excited to see how you continue to become who God created you to be!

I was thinking about what I wish for you in college, and realized there were some things I wish I had known before I started college. I hope these help make your four years even better:

Roommate Smorgasbord!!!

(All the names of the characters in this story have been changed to protect the innocent.  Actually no one is innocent, which is even more of a reason for protection.)

Growing up I always had a roommate… my brother. We were a family of two boys and a girl so guess who was the only one that got her own room… always. Well not always, because my senior year in high school I finally got my own room. It was divine. My brother went away to college and it was all mine. Life was good!!! When I started planning on going away to college I found out that I had to have a roommate.

A Parent’s (and Grandparent’s) Prayer

Forty-four years ago this month, I was standing on the sidewalk in front of Ruth Collins women’s dormitory at Baylor University, waving good-bye to my dad. Both of us had tears in our eyes. I remember it as if it were yesterday. I had just turned 18 and as I watched his car disappear around the corner, I was certain I had made a terrible mistake leaving home to go to college. Wasn’t TCU so close to my parents’ home that I could have walked there? Why, why, why did I feel like I needed to be “on my own?” Why did I think I needed to go to Baylor, when it meant borrowing so much money that it would take me ten years to pay back all my loans after graduating?

Thou Shalt Not Steal

This weekend I was running a couple errands and became increasingly bothered by the people and situations I encountered. I went to only two stores, and came home with three stories/experiences that really bothered me.

In the first store, I found the few things I needed to buy and went to get in line to pay. As I approached what I deemed to be the shortest line, another customer also walked up to get in line. I encouraged him to go first since I had a few things to buy and he had only one item and would be finished faster. “Well, really I have two,” he spoke softly, with a bit of a glint in his eye. “One is in my pocket. Sometimes you just don’t wanna pay for things, you know?”

My sister's car

When my sister, the oldest in our family, left for college, she went without a car. She lived on campus and apparently made friends with enough people who did have cars that she had no problem getting places she needed to go. At some point in her junior year, though, I remember my parents bought a car for her.

It wasn’t a fancy car. It was a used, red Geo Prizm. Four doors. Decent gas mileage. No cruise control. But it did have one pretty snazzy feature on the cassette deck. (I’m sorry, what’s a CD?) It had this “song repeat” button that was so smart it could back up exactly to the beginning of the previous/current song. It was much like the “repeat” function on the forthcoming CD players, but for a tape. So far ahead of its time, right? And so very smart.

Sharing your faith with faculty

College students have always intrigued me! When I was a high school senior, I was dating a college freshman. She took me to her campus group where I met her campus minister, who later became a close friend and influenced me toward campus ministry. During my Masters studies I took every course relating to that field. Later I worked with students as a full-time campus minister at a large state university. Then most of my 40+ years of teaching were with students who were also preparing for student ministry.

I love college students, especially the six who are my grandchildren. They still challenge me in my understanding of their generation, as well as their growth and relationships. While I know I still have a lot to learn about them, I believe they still need to learn a thing or two themselves… and research proves it!

One university’s human growth and development faculty declared that, during the 4 years of college, students make 8 cognitive leaps.

My friend Moses

I was a junior in college when God started working in my life in a whole new way. I had been reading the Bible for years; but something was different now. Suddenly I realized I needed a plan, a roadmap of sorts, for my Bible reading. It turned out to be a great thing in my life.

I perused a variety of devotional and Bible-reading-plan books and decided to start with “The Pentateuch: Chapter by Chapter.” As the name implies, it really was a chapter-by-chapter guide to the first five books of the bible. Some chapters had only a couple paragraphs of commentary or notes about them; others had closer to a whole page. But this little book literally guided me through the beginning of what would wind up being my first time to read the entire Bible, cover to cover.

The most surprising thing happened as I read these five books: I made a friend.

Sign me up!

I was involved in only a handful of activities in college. Mostly they were groups that found me, rather than me finding them. Either I had a friend who invited me to get involved in something, or I stumbled upon it some other way. I didn’t often go looking for student groups to explore or join... but now I realize I should have.

I recently did a search on my university’s website for all their student organizations (753 total). Now I know many of these are new since I graduated, but still, it’s pretty impressive what’s available out there. Of course there are all manner of academic-related groups. It seems every college or major has some kind of student group. There are also loads of social awareness organizations, every flavor of religious student group, a rather long list of Greek chapters to consider and even several dance troupes related to obscure people groups around the globe.

But then there are more off-the-beaten path ones too.

You Find What You Look For

I went to college at a reputed “party school.” I never really saw the party aspect firsthand. I remember driving past frat houses when they were in full party mode. As best as I can remember, from lo those many years ago, my thoughts were a strange mix of envy, pity and curiosity. I remember driving by the morning after parties and the envy quickly disappearing.

Because I was (and still am) terribly boring, I never got closer to these parties than the occasional drive-by. No, wait, it seems like maybe I did shoot a story for our college TV station at a party one time. I can’t remember. I hear that memory loss is symptomatic of those parties, so maybe I was there.