I need to write a short essay for a scholarship application. They gave a few typical prompts, and the option to write about a topic of my choice, or to reuse an essay I wrote for class or for a college application. Being a junior in an engineering major, I haven’t exactly written many essays in the last few years. Several for psychology my freshman year, and one about the environment in geology. After staring at my cursor blinking for a good while, I decided to go back and dig through my old college applications for some inspiration. Not to straight-up recycle one. A lot has changed in the three years since I was writing those. But I thought I might find one that would be a good starting point. I came across a document named “Personal statement”—I apparently hadn’t bothered to specify what I was writing it for. But between the essay itself and the prompt, which I also had (but which didn’t say specifically what it was for, either) it seems that I was writing this after having been accepted to Tech, for something related to financial aid. Anyways, it really struck me. But I’ll let you read it, and then add some comments at the end (where I pick back up in italics.)

Purpose In Every Step

Don’t you realize that in a race everyone runs, but only one person gets the prize? So run to win! All athletes are disciplined in their training. They do it to win a prize that will fade away, but we do it for an eternal prize. So I run with purpose in every step. I am not just shadowboxing. I discipline my body like an athlete, training it to do what it should. Otherwise, I fear that after preaching to others I myself might be disqualified.

1 Corinthians 9:24-27

Throughout the New Testament, the Apostle Paul repeatedly compares the Christian life to running a race. As an athlete myself, the analogy has special significance to me. A lot of people talk about “chapters” of their lives. I would be more inclined to see my life as a series of races in some sort of Olympic track event, all striving for the great prize my King will award me at the end of it all. The problem with the chapters analogy is that you read a book kicking back in a hammock, flipping the pages and watching the story unfold without exerting yourself in any way. The life of faith, though, is a serious business. It is not something you live out in a hammock. It requires all the devotion, discipline, and focus of training for and running a marathon. So “I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us” (Philippians 3:14). The finish line of high school is rapidly approaching, and before I know it I will hear the gunshot telling me to lunge across the line into yet another race—college. I am somewhat unsure about it, not really knowing what is in store around that curve in the track up ahead, but I have motivation to keep running no matter what.

I have come to see myself in my proper place—part of the grand, epic story starting with the narrative in Genesis and that will eventually finish as foretold in Revelation. In this story every one of us has a role to play. Living just for my story only motivates me so far, but to be caught up in a story that transcends my life gives me a cause worthy of every moment of my life. I have a reason to get out of bed every morning. In Hebrews 11, Paul lists many people in Scripture and the legacies they left behind. Each of them has played out their role and left their mark on history. Then he brings it back to us, saying, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race that God has set before us” (Hebrews 12:1). This verse has been recited so many times it has lost a lot of meaning, but just the other day it clicked. It makes a world of difference to read it in the context of the preceding chapter, instead of reading the verse in isolation as is so often done. Paul is saying, “Look at the people I’ve just listed. Look at all God accomplished through them because of their faith. They are your heritage, they’ve handed off the baton to you, and now they are sitting in the stands cheering you on as you run your leg of the race. You’re one of them; their God is yours. You will see God work powerfully in your life if you let yourself be caught up into the epic that they were living in—His story.”

So with that mindset, I keep running no matter what is ahead and I trust God to be faithful, as He has been faithful so far. This track has had plenty of uphills and downhills, but God’s hand has been in it all, and in retrospect I wouldn’t change a thing if I could. He has been with me through countless transitions, upheavals, and storms, and He has blessed me beyond measure. As the prophet Isaiah said:

Even youths will become weak and tired,
And young men will fall in exhaustion.
But those who trust in the Lord will find new strength.
They will soar high on wings like eagles.
They will run and not grow weary.
They will walk and not grow faint.

Isaiah 40:30-31

Through everything, God has continued to give me new strength for each step, for each new difficulty. When the deteriorating situation in the country we live in brought my family’s annual trips to the mountains to an end and later made us move from our home of twelve years to another city, God was still there. When my heart was broken in ninth grade and I was left devastated, God took my by the hand and helped me back up, and gave me strength to keep running. Time and time again, God has carried me over each hurdle that crosses my path.

So as I once again face an uncertain future, it is God whom I will continue to trust my life to. He is the One laying out the path before my feet. He has given me the passions and characteristics that have led me to choose a career in engineering—a love and gift for physics and math, an instinct for problem solving, an fascination from a young age with designing and building bridges and buildings out of Legos, playing cards, and anything else I could find that would do the trick—and has opened the door for it to happen. As I hear about Virginia Tech’s reputation and look at the Blacksburg area, all of which is very appealing, I believe that if Virginia Tech is where he wants me he will open the door financially. The race is in His capable hands.

The first thing to hit me was how little has changed after all, in terms of the themes I was writing about. If you read my blog regularly, a lot of what I wrote in this essay should sound familiar. I’ve come back to this analogy time and time again over the years. I gave a talk in my Engage Group towards the end of this past semester about this. While some of these concepts have developed further in my mind since writing this, I used a lot of the same points and these same verses in that talk as I did in this essay. Reading it in an essay I wrote three years ago was kind of crazy.

The second thing to hit me was what wasn’t in that list of difficulties, because it hadn’t happened yet. I knew I was facing a huge transition and an uncertain future, but I don’t think I really knew just how tough it would end up being. Since writing those words, I went through what is to date my greatest trial yet. And yet again, God proved that he is worthy of my trust.

Several weeks back I wrote a post titled, “I’ve got this.” I almost called it “Letting go,” but I felt like I needed to save that title. I got this sense that that post was more of a prequel. The part where God says, “I’ve got this.” And while there was some letting go on my part then, I had a feeling a post would follow, at some point, that would really be the point of letting go. Well, here it is.

I hit a breaking point tonight. All this stuff that’s been been popping up here and there, elusively, finally came rushing to the surface. I hadn’t realized how much all these different things had just been adding up, building up pressure, until the dam broke.

This past week was Thanksgiving break, and a lot of these things came to a head over break.

I went into break with a lot of somewhat lofty expectations of what I wanted to get done with all my free time. I had some homework to work on that’s due later this week. I could always get it done closer to the due date, but with a whole week off, I could spare some time to knock it out so I wouldn’t have to later. I wanted to get my desk under control, and my inbox. I wanted to work on scholarship applications. Most of all, I wanted to spend a lot of time seeking God—reading, praying, whatever. I especially wanted to focus that time on praying about some major life decisions and stuff. I knew, from experience, that it was crazy to expect to get everything done that I was hoping to. But I thought it was realistic to think I’d get some of it done.

Zip. Zilch. Zero.

I might have set a personal record for how little I did this break. I mean, I did a few things with people. But outside of that, when I was just chilling in my room…I played games on my iPad. I read up on technology blogs. I watched Quantum of Solace so I could see it again before watching Skyfall (I watched Casino Royale a couple weeks back.) The most productive thing I did was to go through my 170 photos from my weekend in DC and throw out more than two thirds of them, and do some editing on the ones that passed.

But the break just went by so fast. I spent the first weekend in DC with some friends. I got back late Sunday night. So I slept half of Monday away, and then bummed around for what was left. On Tuesday I went to a “Pie Day” at the international center—basically, a potluck lunch, all pies (both sweet and things like pot pie and quiche)—and again, did nothing for the rest of the day. (One of those two nights was the night I watched Quantum of Solace.) At this point, I thought I still had the rest of the week to get those things done. On Wednesday I started physical therapy on my knee. Thursday, being Thanksgiving, I wasn’t about to get into homework or cleaning or anything. I had Thanksgiving dinner with a bunch of the international students our Engage Group has connected with. On Friday I went to physical therapy again, and that evening I watched Skyfall with a friend. On Saturday I watched us beat UVA for the ninth straight time. And then Sunday was back to normal. Sleeping in, and then going to 130 Jackson at 5 for sound check before the 707. OK, so maybe I didn’t set any records after all. At least not the one I thought I did. On second thought, I think I did more this break than any week-long break since coming here. But it was all hanging out with people (and physical therapy.) I didn’t do any of the things I had in mind that I was gonna do. So when the end of the break came, and I realized I wasn’t able to check a single thing off that list, I got really frustrated with myself. And discouraged. And tonight, with classes back underway, that homework still hanging over me, my room still a disaster zone, my iPad telling me that I have 272 unread messages, of 1031 total (They’ve been piling up a while. The unread ones are messages that I judged by the subject line that I didn’t really need to read—and never came back to)…I just felt really overwhelmed. And in that moment, all kinds of things that have been weighing on me came to the surface.

It was at this point that I decided I needed to drop what I was doing, and let God speak to me. He was using this stress to bring all this stuff forward that I’d been bent over double over, without even realizing it. I knew it wouldn’t do any good to try to keep pushing forward with homework. I needed to step away, and try to process all this stuff. I felt like the best first step was to start by just writing out everything. All of those things that were overwhelming me, frustrating me, filling me with guilt or shame, everything that God was bringing out in me right now. I didn’t really know where to go from there. I started praying, and God brought the chorus of a Third Day song to mind:

Take it all, cause I can’t take it any longer
All I have, I can’t make it on my own
Take the first, take the last
Take the good and take the bad
Here I am, all I have, take it all

I cued the song, to listen to the whole thing. As it played, I thought of the series that we just finished at [nlcf], about freedom. One of the things that was discussed a lot was things that stand in the way of freedom, that we need to let go of. Things that often are even seen in secular culture as exercising freedom, but that really are obstacles to true, biblical freedom. I also remembered something I noticed for the first time the other night. Hebrews 12:1-2 says:

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith. Because of the joy awaiting him, he endured the cross, disregarding its shame. Now he is seated in the place of honor beside God’s throne.

I’ve always read the part about stripping off weight with the emphasis on sin. What struck me the other night is that is says “every weight that slows us down, especially the sin…” Yes, it highlights sin. But it is clearly implying that not every weight that slows us down is sin.

In my case, while some of the stuff that God brought to mind tonight is sin, much of it is not. But it’s still weighing me down.

Then he brought a line from another song to mind. This one is Magnificent Obsession, by Steven Curtis Chapman.

Cut through these chains that tie me down to so many lesser things
Let all my dreams fall to the ground, until this one remains

Of course, I had to listen to this one in its entirety too. As the song finished, I wrote,

God, I want to be free. I want to die to myself…I want to run the race for you. Strip me of everything weighing me down and tripping me up. I’m through trying to make this work on my own. Here I am. All I have. Take it all.

I’ve found over the years both of these songs are songs I come back to time and time again. As long as we walk on this fallen earth, we will need to keep coming back to this. Keep putting our old selves to death, surrendering to Jesus, letting him take our burdens. Tonight I needed that again.

I’ve been reading a book this week. As in, one of those things consisting of a bunch of pages held together at one edge, that you actually have to turn as you read. It’s been a strange experience. I had to get used to holding the book in my hand in such a way as to keep it open as I read, a position that used to be very familiar to me, but one that I haven’t had much practice with recently. I do all my reading on my iPad these days. As I’ve mentioned before, that includes reading the Bible. (Side note: What has me really drooling over the iPad mini is that its size and weight (from what I’ve heard) make it pretty much the most perfect reading device ever built. Whenever it gets a Retina display, perfection has been achieved.) I have a couple dozen books on a shelf that I have from before I started phasing out books that take up space on a bookshelf and pounds in a suitcase in favor of books that take up megabytes of digital storage. I hope to replace them with their digital counterparts eventually, but until then, I’m hanging on to the paper versions. But anything new I get, I get digitally. My textbooks this year are all digital rentals. Except for Waking the Dead, one of those books I mentioned that sit on my physical shelf, my entire John Eldredge collection resides on my iBooks bookshelf. I could go on.

Reading on an iPad has literally changed the way I read. I can’t bring myself to markup pages of books. But in iBooks, with highlighting and note tools built in and a swipe or a tap away, I find myself doing it more and more. When I picked up this book this week, several times I have really wanted to reach out and slide my finger along a sentence that really struck me, before I remembered that, well, that doesn’t work on this kind of book. I also wanted to tap on a word several times to bring up a definition. But, well, that doesn’t work either. And then when it came time to stop reading, it was really a jolt to remember that I needed a bookmark. I put the book facedown on my desk, open to the page, while I started searching through my desk drawers for my collection of bookmarks from back when I was an avid reader of the kind that required such things.

I actually didn’t start writing this to discuss paper versus digital, but I couldn’t resist recounting my experiences with this ancient technology. Anyways, you may be wondering what the book is, and why I’m reading it in this form factor. And where I’m going with all this.

The book is Confessions of a Caffeinated Christian, by John Fischer. (Kind of interesting given the image I’ve been using for my blog, which I took a couple years ago and started using for this blog when I started it in the spring. I wasn’t even thinking about this book, either when I took the picture or when I set it as the header image of my blog’s first look. In a case of interesting timing, though, my second redesign places the picture prominently again.) I first read it in tenth grade. It was one of the few books I checked out of the high school library during my time there. I checked it out because, being a coffee lover, it sounded interesting. I wasn’t prepared for how much that book would speak to me. It was incredible how much I could relate to the author, and not just in his love for coffee. He is, like me, an introvert. Not just an introvert. A loner. Much of his time growing up was spent on his own, doing his own thing. At one point he describes how much he enjoys sitting in a Starbucks with a cup of coffee, just watching the world go by. Watching everyone doing their thing, and just being removed from everything, in no hurry. He could be talking about me. In fact, I felt like that in a lot of the areas he discusses. The book is pretty much a compilation of anecdotes from his life that he uses to make a point. In almost every one of them, I could very easily put myself in his shoes. I just remember being struck by that, and really challenged in a lot of the things that he talks about.

Recently I remembered this book, and wanted to get my hands on it again. On looking into it, I learned that it seems to be out of print. This means there is no ebook version of it. Not on iBooks, not on the Kindle Store, not anywhere on the web that I could find. The only way I could find to get it was in paperback, used, on the Amazon Marketplace. After a lot of deliberation, I decided I wanted this book enough to do what I thought I was done doing—buy a paperback again. I bought it “Like New” through Amazon for a penny. Plus $3.99 shipping.

It arrived on Monday, and I picked it up from the mail room on Wednesday, and over the last five days I’ve had to force myself to put it down each time after reading several chapters a day. I don’t want to read it too fast, because then it’s done, until I read it again sometime down the road. I want to try and make it last at least a little while. I’m on track to finish it within about a week of getting it. I’d be finished in a day if I let myself.

Why does this book capture me so much? Part of it is the way coffee is kind of a staging point for almost every story, and each point he makes about some profound eternal truth. There’s something about relating profound eternal truths to something so ordinary and everyday. I mean, look at what Jesus did. The difference is that Jesus compared the kingdom of God to everyday things in the lives of first-century Jews. Fischer compares it to Starbucks. Another part of why this book grabs me is the numerous ways in which I can relate to the writer. But I think a lot of it is just how down-to-earth, how real he is. There’s just something about reading about someone else going through life, and all that it brings, and finding God in it. There’s no front, no facade. He’s brutally honest about what he’s thinking and feeling in the situations he recounts. Even when it’s not pretty. But then he gets to the good part, where God teaches him a lesson through the situation, in spite of his thoughts and feelings. Lessons that most of us need to hear. And most of the stories he tells are not spectacular events or anything. They’re the mundane, the everyday scenarios and encounters. That, too, makes the stories that much more powerful, in my mind.

Something that keeps coming to mind when I can’t put this book down is: why is this rarely the case with the Bible? Why is it that, more often than not these days, when I do read the Bible, I’m happy to put it down and check it off my list for that day, so I can get on with what I’d rather be doing?

After all, the Bible is by far the most dynamic book ever written. I mean, think about it. You’ve got genres across the board, from detailed chronologies and tables of figures to intense, R-rated action scenes and murders, to poetry and shockingly explicit love songs. And everything in between. You’ve got the Psalms, which range from cries of anguish and depression to songs of praise and intimate worship to prayers of vengeance against God’s and the psalmist’s enemies. There are the prophets, who put everything on the line to carry God’s message to his people, and in one breath pointed out the rebelliousness of Israel and Judah in incredibly graphic analogies, and then professed God’s undying love and offer of mercy to them in spite of it all. Everything I’ve just described can be found in just the Old Testament. Are you seeing it yet? I mean, if Hollywood picked up the story of the life of David (and if people could get past the stigma of it being a “Bible story”) it would be an instant blockbuster. It’s got everything all the hit action movies are known for. If you don’t believe me, seriously, read 1 and 2 Samuel. Approach it from that angle, not with the mindset you typically have of the Bible, but more like when you pick up The Lord of the Rings. And David’s just one example. From cover to cover, you find stories of individuals, from shepherds to fishermen to kings, going through life, and answering God’s call. Not perfectly, by any means. The Bible is also brutally honest, refusing to sugar-coat its heroes. Their failures, some pretty big ones, are immortalized for all to see in its pages. And yet you see how God used them anyways. You can relate to them. Some more than others, and not always in their specific circumstances, but in their humanity. Their hopes and dreams, their successes, their failures, their strengths, their flaws. These are things we all have. And when you take a step back, you see how each of their lives plays into this plot of epic proportions that is woven throughout, from Genesis to Revelation.

And of course, in four books tucked in the middle somewhere is the centerpiece of it all, who is right at home in all this. Jesus is undoubtedly the most dynamic person to ever walk this earth. This rabbi from the backwater town of Nazareth, who touched lepers, hung out with notorious sinners, and picked fights with the religious leaders, was a far cry from the one-dimensional person he is mistaken for much of the time. He welcomed kids with open arms when his disciples thought he wouldn’t have time for them. He had compassion on the blind, the lame, the grieving, and set things right. He invited himself over to a tax collector’s house for lunch, and changed the guy’s life. He overturned tables in the Temple and sent merchants, money changers, and livestock scattering—not losing control in a fit of rage, but in an act of premeditated aggression, in which he took the time to braid a whip to do it more effectively. He cursed a fig tree and made it wither up because he was hungry, but figs happened to be out of season. He told his followers to eat his flesh and drink his blood. He made a name for himself with his teachings and miracles, but shunned the popularity and skipped town to go preach and heal elsewhere. The crowds were amazed by the authority with which he taught and flocked to him. The Pharisees hated him for stubbornly refusing to stoop to their petty interpretation of God’s Law. He cried out to his Father in anguish in anticipation of the torture, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, that he was about to go through. But then he quietly took the beatings, the mocking, the rigged trial and unfair death sentence. The crowd who had hailed him days before asked for his crucifixion and the release of a revolutionary instead. And with legions of angels at his command, ready to obliterate his executioners and establish his rule on earth, Jesus allowed nails to be pounded through his hands and feet into the wooden beams that he hung on until his strength gave out, and he suffocated. He allowed the weight of the sin of the world and all its consequences to be placed squarely on his shoulders. And then he willingly released his spirit.

But he wasn’t done. Not by a long shot. He wrestled the keys of death and Hades from the devil and walked out of that tomb on Sunday morning. But instead of showing up at Herod’s and Pilate’s and saying, “Nice try,” and proving to the world once and for all that he is the Messiah, he showed himself to his followers, and told them to tell the world.

Who is this guy?

And yet, for all this, so much of the time the Bible can seem dry. Too familiar. I’ve heard it all so many times that sometimes the power of it is lost on me.

I think I’ve rambled enough. What’s the takeaway point here? I think there are a couple.

One is that, as great and important as Scripture is, sometimes God speaks to us other ways. As John Eldredge said, “Truth doesn’t need a verse attached to it to be true” (Waking the Dead). The implication of this is that time spent connecting with God does not necessarily have to be time reading the Bible. For me, it’s often reading books, like the one I’ve been reading the past several days. Sometimes God seems to be speaking far louder to me through those than he is through the Bible. Other times, it’s listening to music. Other times it’s just sitting in silence and reflecting. Sometimes it’s blogging. It can look like a lot of things, and can look different for different people. We don’t have a relationship with the Bible. We have a relationship with Jesus. I think it’s more important to be open to the way God is working than to blindly read the Bible “because I should.”

The caveat to that entire paragraph is that the Bible is the only book that can claim to be God’s inspired word. Even the books I read that point to Jesus are only lenses through which to see the truth of the Bible. Of course, it also is important to make sure that they do line up with the truth of the Bible. These other things can ultimately only supplement Scripture. A Bible-free diet is not recommended. While every chunk of time we set apart to connect with God doesn’t necessarily have to be reading the Bible, we do need to be reading it.

Which brings me to my other point. As I pointed out above, the Bible is an incredible book. Unlike any other. When I get past the mindset that I’ve read it all before, and look at it with fresh eyes, I can be blown away. Sometimes I envy people who are reading the Bible for the first time. While I have an understanding of it that only a lot of experience with it can bring, I don’t always have that wide-eyed amazement at what I’m reading. Many people who start reading it for the first time just can’t get enough of it. It’s so fresh and real to them, and unlike anything they’ve ever read. I can’t remember the first time I read most parts of the Bible. I was far to young to really grasp how incredible what I was reading was. By the time I could, I’d already read it a bunch. The downside of having a lot of verses memorized from when I was young is that it’s easy to rattle them off or read over them without grasping what they’re saying. There are still definitely moments where something strikes me that I’ve never realized before. That’s the beauty of the Bible. There’s always something new to discover. A passage that you’ve read a million times can speak into your situation in a way you’ve never thought of it before. But if you’re just reading it to check it off your list, skimming because you already know what it says, you’ll miss these moments. This is why I said go into it with a different mindset, looking to read it from a new perspective. Asking God to make it come alive to you. More often than not, the times that I get the most out of my time with the Bible are the times when, before I start, I specifically ask God to speak to me through what I’m about to read. And then I go into it deliberately reading with fresh eyes.

Like I said, read the story of David’s life like you would a novel. It’s pretty intense.