For those of us who mark our years based on the academic calendar, the month of May tends to be a month of reflection. I usually end up taking this time looking back on the highs, lows, and in-betweens from August until now. 2017-2018 has been a doozy for our family. In October, we experienced the tragic run-in between my in-laws’ dog and our neighbor’s dog, and the relationship with our neighbor has been tense ever since. In November, my original staff trainer from the University of Illinois lost his sweet 11 year old boy to a freak asthmatic anaphylactic reaction. Horrifically painful to watch their family say goodbye to Jaden. On a ministry standpoint, Cru has been undergoing some organizational changes, and this has been fairly difficult to navigate as we’ve seen dear friends and colleagues decide to step away from campus ministry. And then the month of March rolled around, where I got hit by a service truck while driving to a staff meeting, and then our apartment was robbed while we were on a ministry trip to Paris. To say that I’m glad to wave goodbye to this school year would be an understatement.

God is infinitely greater than our expectations.

Our expectations are derived from our finite experiences.

I came to Chile exactly three months ago today with expectations firmly based in my experience in Cru. From the beginning of my freshmen year, this experience has included living  in close community, growing in my relationship with God, and learning to serve Him through ministry. I believed that God would provide for me during my semester abroad as He has for the past three years.

We’ve all heard at one point or another that reading your bible is a generally good thing to do.
Maybe your parents made you read your bible every night before bed. Maybe your pastor
talked about it in church. Maybe your bible study leader asks you every week if you’ve been
reading your bible. But as important of a discipline as it is, it can tend to lose its proper meaning
in our lives. We open up our bibles to Samuel and read about Philistine foreskins and it leaves
us confused. What are we supposed to do with that? And yet, we are told to read. Soon it turns
into a chore – something to check off the list every day to earn God points we can cash in when
we get to heaven, but void of any real effect on our lives. But God has a lot to say about the
Bible. He has given it to us for a reason, and speaks to us in various ways through it. Here are
just a few of the ways God works in our lives through His word.

Fomo, the acronym form of FEAR OF MISSING OUT. The internet defines fomo as “a compulsive concern that one might miss an opportunity or satisfying event, often aroused by posts seen on social media websites” (or, in my case, innate extroversion). Here it is used in a sentence: Even though she was exhausted, Jenica’s fomo got the best of her and she went to the party.

Each of us care especially about what our professors have to say. We want them to be impressed by our ideas, so that we might come away with a strong letter of recommendation or a reference. We’ve spent a lot of time coming up with good questions and comments to talk with them about in office hours—I know I have. The question I want to raise is this: Have you ever put this much thought into what you’ll talk to God about?