Friends, a Little Pre-College Lesson

Last evening I sat in my dining room surrounded by 5 of my best friends. As I listened to the laughter, I was thinking about how blessed I am. God has given me several AMAZING friends who have helped to shape who I am in Him. And I thank him for it almost every single day. It hit me that last night would be the last time for several months that I would hear that beautiful mixture of laughs. I love when we all laugh together. We start out with our natural laughs. Then we create fake ones. Then we laugh harder. I praise God for those moments and pray that we will be blessed with many more. As hard as it is, I have to thank God for the harder moments we've endured over the past few days as well. We have shed a lot of tears as we have gone off to college one by one. But you know what...you don't cry over just anyone. You cry over the people who have made an impact on your life. I am so thankful that I'm blessed with relationships worth crying over.

So basically, this ties in with the lesson I want to share with you guys before we get started with school. Let's look at Luke 12:16-21, the Parable of the Rich Fool. The scripture can be found here. Basically, this was another one of the very important lessons I learned in Nicaragua. These few verses contain one of the best keys to happiness one can find: The Secret of the Poor, as Trav called it. As you guys go to college and continue on the paths God has planned for you, this will be crucial. Ready? Here it is: the poor don't build barns; they build relationships. They are the opposite of the rich fool. They make themselves living sacrifices and invest their time and energy into building deep relationships with God and with others. So there we have the gateway to happiness. It ties in with an earlier blog I've written: the two commands we must commit our lives to- 1) Love God. 2) Love others. Why is this so important? Check it out here. Because when we love others and take time to grow relationships with others, God's love is made perfect. In the end, we will look back on college as a time of working toward our goals. We will remember fun times. We will remember challenging times. But mostly, we will remember the people who were by our sides throughout the process. The people that we formed relationships with- the people who, through loving on each other, helped us to experience God's complete, fulfilling, perfect love.

This has been on my heart because right now, I feel that love in our group of friends. The love that God wants us to feel in a friendship. We are so blessed to have been given a taste of that before we head out into the world-before we leave the familiar and begin a very different phase of life. Our advantage is that we know what to look for in the group of people we surround ourselves with when we're not at home. I hope and pray that we can all form relationships that have God at the center. Relationships that complete His love, just like the relationships we have now. I pray that He will keep us all safe and sound, and that we will be the lights of UVa, JMU, RU, Queens, USC, and CSHS. I love you all dearly :)

PB&J