There are so many issues regarding my Christian faith that I struggle with day to day. A while back I wrote about my struggle with prayer. Prayer is something I still have trouble with, and it’s something that I’ll probably never master. I constantly fight with my horrible verbal communication skills, and it’s greatly portrayed in my prayer life. However, prayer is far from being my only spiritual trial.
Academically, I have trouble with reading comprehension. That probably sounds stupid coming from someone who was an English major at the beginning of the semester, but it probably is one of my greatest academic struggles. I think that I spend too much time focusing on the structure of a single sentence, that my overall understanding of a passage is not very thorough at all. Not only does this hurt me in school, it also hurts me in my relationship with God. I believe that not only reading of scripture, but also thorough study of scripture is essential for growing in Christian faith. My problem is not in my will to read the Bible on a daily basis, but in my lack of understanding what I read each day. Most days I’ll spend twenty or thirty minutes in the Word, and then I walk away feeling as if I have gained nothing. It’s something I pray about, but it’s also a problem I really wish somebody could give me a solution to.
But I guess what makes me continue to open my Bible each day is the fact that sometimes I read and understand things that really do help me so much. Psalm 27 is a passage that pretty much got me through this year. I’m not one to complain, but 2010 has not been the easiest year for me, and I truly am thankful that God reveals things to me in his Word at the times I need it most. The day after we found out that my grandfather was in his last days, I was pretty distraught. That morning I read through the book of Habakkuk, and although it is a pretty depressing book, I found the end to be very uplifting. A majority of the three chapters are about crying out to the Lord for mercy when the Lord had been so wrathful. Similar to Job, Habakkuk has had so much taken from him. But in the end, he rejoices in the Lord. “Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; i will take joy in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer’s; he makes me tread on my high places” (Hab. 3:17-19). Loosing my grandfather was hard for me and the rest of my family, but I am still blessed with the memory of him and the joy he brought to so many in his life. Though it was hard, this showed me that I must rejoice in the Lord even in the midst of hardships. And even when it seems that I’ve lost so much, I still have much more to be grateful for.
-Elizabeth
Something Like That 