September 20, 2012

Living Proof

Thursday, September 20th, 2012

I honestly don’t think I’ll ever be able to wrap my headaround just how amazing God is. Every day I find myself praising Him for allthe countless blessings that he’s given me. This year I decided to take on anAP Psychology class. Knowing that this class would be difficult and for collegecredit I knew that I would find myself challenged everyday in that class. Wereceived a study guide for our first quiz we would be having, but the day thatwe were going through the questions and working on them with others I was sick.So, I just finished the study guide at the best of my ability for the due date.When we were correcting the study guide I was getting over half of the answerswrong. When it was time to tally up all our wrong answers, my teacher had us readoff our grades in front of the class so they would easily be put into thecomputer, looking down at my 21/43 score my heart started to race. When my namewas called and I read off my score my teacher said, “Carrie, did you get allthe problems?” Truthfully there were quite a few that I skipped. He said hewould give me another day to work on it. The rest of the class I couldn’tfocus, my grade was going to be starting off with an F for the year. Doubt andworry started to creep in. So I prayed. Slowly I started to calm down because Iknew that God would use this situation for good, weather now or within fiveyears, I knew God would prevail. Once the bell rang for the end of class, Iwent and talked to my teacher to see what my options would be for the studyguide, he said he would give me another one to do, he didn’t have one. So hesaid he would give me the average score for everyone in the class which was a40/43. I didn’t deserve that. How could he just do that for me? Grace. It wasthat day that I finally knew the concept of grace. God did the same thing. Hesent his only perfect Son to die on the cross for all of our sins, we didn’tdeserve that. It should’ve been us on the cross. But no, it wasn’t us. I’mtruly thanking God for the should’ve been.

            Yesterdaywas the first true Quest night for the junior high students within our church.Man, I am so blessed where God has placed me. I have two moms and myselfleading the group with thirteen seventh grade girls. What a bunch we have. I’mso excited to see where God leads our group. Along with working with juniorhigh, I am still going to my high school youth group on the same night.Yesterday we did something completely different than usual, we had a scavengerhunt around the neighborhood, it was going great except for the fact that itwas thundering and lightning outside, but hey, we’re all still alive. One ofthe tasks was to do a random act of kindness for someone. There’s a yacht clubnot too far from the house so we went there. The bar area was filled elderlycoming for late night drinks. My leader suggested, I help walk a couple totheir car. It ended up only being the wife but I was more than happy to do so.I carried her purse and leftovers from dinner because she could barely walksince she needed new knees. She began to ask me what organization I wasassociated with and I explained that I was with my church. She continued to saythat her old neighbor went to our church and brought her on a retreat and allthe kids were very well behaved and never had to be scolded or disciplined. Shewas so proud of the fact that we were living kind and helpful lives andteaching others to live in that way. I explained it’s because we have the lightof Jesus shinning through us. Just this little old lady wanting to know moreabout God, and noticing the work that he can do through a person’s life isincredible.