Summer

With summer being over and returning back to school the question constantly arising of “how was your summer?” To say that it was a great summer as most people tend to say I have summed up my experience as a good and hard summer. Then the next question that comes about is “what do you by hard?” This answer usually deems the answer of I worked as a PSW and took a summer course at the same time so it was hard. And this is very true, yet my summer was much more then that. It was a testing ground for my faith. I experienced a lot of loss this summer with losing Paul as well as other elderly people from my church.

Along with that came the struggle of my personal faith being challenged through my course consisting of world religions. With being presented with these various world views I was challenged to evaluate my own once again and stand true to what I hold to be truth, which is actual truth. Out of it though, I learned that being a Christian is very different then any other religion. Yes I would agree that there are many similarities between many of the world religions but the more one comes to understand each the clearer the differences formulate. Almost finishing this course (with the Lords strength only) I have walked away knowing that what I believe and depend on is not of myself but from God. Total dependence is the basis of our faith, and when we choose to not do this we land in more trouble then we began with. I definitely felt that way during this summer.

Throughout this summer I was often to be found sitting at the picnic table at my house doing homework and listening to the radio. A new release came out and I considered in my summer theme song. The artist talked about how we often talk about what God has done and how amazing it is to be with him but we fail to reflect on what it would be without him. This summer I think I experienced a little taste of that, being without him. The stress of the summer and the involvement of studying other religion was an excellent way the devil to wedge his way into my mind, and much of the song reflect my summer.

The refreshing thing about walking out of this summer into a new school year is that I now have that knowledge of being without him and have no desire to return. Additionally it gave me a taste of what it was like to live without Christ, something that I have not really experienced because I have lived to be a Christian my whole life. This summer was a hard but good summer and I can say it was good because of what I learned and how I grew. There is still much more growing to occur from this summer experience but I have confidence that God will not let that go undone.
 

In the meantime here is my summer theme song
Me without You