Today

In college a buddy of mine's parents told him as he dropped him off that the next four years would be the best years of his life.

And that made me feel so depressed. What about life after those four years? When I switched majors, I certainly didn't cram extra classes into the semesters in order to still make it under 4, because I saw it as an opportunity to make those "four best years of my life" into those "five best years of my life."

But

it

can't

be

so.

I cannot believe that life peaks when you go to college and after that it's like Crap, now it's just maintenance mode until I die b/c I had all the fun and excitement that I was going to have.

And I remember the first time I went back to visit campus. I stayed at my old apartment, and despair gripped me so tightly it took the breath out of me. Why am I not here anymore, I thought. Why am I not here with the close, deep community that I knew so well. Why am I now at a job that I loathe in a place that is not Blacksburg VA? It's been much better since that first visit whenever I go back, but it's still hard for some reason.

I just watched a NOOMA video where Rob Bell talks about this sort of thing, where if we're holding onto the way things were, then our arms aren't free to embrace today. He says that life is not static. Things change, friends come and go, people lose jobs, friends die, people get married, people don't get married, so on and so on. And that's the way it is.

He illustrated w/ the story of Jesus reappearing to Mary Magdalene after Jesus resurrects from the dead. This same Jesus drove out 7 demons from Mary's life, so you can imagine how excited Mary was to see him. She must have wanted for things to go back to the way they were.

But Jesus told her, "let go of me," and he tells her to tell everyone what happened. He gives her a role to play. He later gives his disciples the Holy Spirit and says Go, I will give you what you need in life with this Holy Spirit of mine, which is Myself.

So we are to receive this new Spirit, to receive whatever role Jesus is giving us, and we are to walk forward and embrace today.