2-33. This Is Not the End

Philippians 2:3: “Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others.  Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves.”

2-32. 47 Things I Learned from My College Experience

It hasn’t fully sunk in yet that, in less than two weeks, I’ll have graduated from Ball State.  Peaks and valleys have abounded and several of you are not yet ready to leave the land of Beneficence, several of you already have—and several of you may have never stepped foot on its terrain to begin with.  So with all that being said, as I pack my belongings and get ready for the “real world,” here’s a list of forty-seven things I’ve learned from my college experience.

2-31. The Greatest Miracle

Psalm 66:5: “Come and see what our God has done, what awesome miracles He performs for people!”

2-30. The Brick Wall Syndrome

Here are a couple of things you should realize if you’re currently in my shoes:

1. I’ll need them back by May 1, and

2. The semi-dreaded homestretch must be upon you.

2-29. Top 40 Countdown

Mike the DJ here counting down the hits—and we don’t stop until we get to the top!  I have a chaotic April here at the radio station of life (W-LIFE) so I’m going to take this week off to do a little more research on the wonderful Nebraska plains (O Pioneers!) and, in my absence, give you a top 40 countdown…of Bible verses, that is, ranked according to the Top Verses website.  There are a little over 31,000 verses in the Bible so this is only a little more than one-tenth of one percent of all the verses out there.  We do the math so you don’t have to (unless you really want to; you won’t hear me complaining).

2-28. We Deserve the Cross

It’s Easter in four days.  That’s not a lie.

And if I wanted to boost morale in all your weary bones, I might say something like the following: “We deserve to have Jesus die for us on the cross because we are morally righteous people and we’ve gotten 99% of God’s laws down and we only fall off the beaten path if a really shiny diamond of a temptation comes along.  Jesus knew this so He was willing to give us the extra 1% and say, ‘You’re just a stone’s throw from perfect and you haven’t rebelled that much anyway so I’ll go ahead and die a peaceful death for all of you and now we can do whatever we want.’”

But that would be a lie.

We deserve the cross.  We deserve to be nailed to it ourselves.

2-27. He Went Out Like a Lamb

I have a friend of mine here down here at Ball State who recently told me that he heard a sermon on how Jesus is “astonishingly good.”  You might ask, “Why the use of the adverb?”  In fact, one of my creative writing teachers down here said that—when writing—we should use adverbs sparingly, if at all.

2-26. Driving Out the Snakes

When I was younger, I had a terrifying fear of…squirrels.  I had recurring dreams where I was sitting in the living room of my old Colorado apartment and I saw an oversized squirrel dramatically leap to the surface of the balcony that overlooked the playground.  Thankfully, I was behind my sliding glass door and nothing could harm me.  Unthankfully, this particular squirrel had supernatural powers and so it unlocked the glass door somehow, jumped inside the living room, chased me into a corner, and demanded that I let it infect me with rabies.

2-25. Incomplete Jigsaw

[Note: I once had a slinky but then my spring break. No WOW next week, even though I know of at least five other schools that break earlier or later than I do. Vacuum up those Oreos; that’s the way the cookie crumbles].

“But while knowledge makes us feel important, it is love that strengthens the church. Anyone who claims to know all the answers doesn’t really know very much” (1 Corinthians 8:1b-2).

2-24. I Guess I’m Not God

I guess I’m not God.

I know that seems worthy of the “Obvious Statement of 2010 Award.”  I can barely remember where I place my dorm keys half the time so I highly doubt I’ll be creating something as monumental as night and day anytime soon.  But—though that seems like a no-brainer on the surface—let’s take a quick peek into a random hypothetical week of mine, less hypothetical than I’d like to always admit, to see how I unfortunately like to “play God.”