Back in the Day

Today two big things happened.  The first was that I had to save a women from drowning herself despite wearing a life jacket.  She jumped into the river and got water up her nose.  She didn't know how to swim and this freaked her out; she couldn't figure out why the life jacket wasn't saving her.  Well, for those of you that have ever worn a life jacket, at least a class 3 pdf, should know that there is some work involved.  Basically when you wear a life jacket your body floats.  not necessarily your head.  This is a problem when you need to keep your head up to breathe.  All you need to do is keep your legs underneath you and you will be able to float with no work.  Instead she let her legs float behind her causing her to have her face under water.  Then I saw it, the feeble hand fly in the air for help.  A few more seconds and cpr may have been necessary.  Instead, I jumped in, and really I think it was instinct (or God) that told me that getting her on her back was the best thing to do.  So I flipped her over and swam her to shore.  She was fine and nothing bad happened.  I saved the day, Hooray!

The second big thing, or very boring thing was my sisters graduation.  Graduations are the most boring thing in the world.  I can't believe I am going to graduate with over 2.5x as many people as there were tonight.  Anyway, as I was ignoring the dozen speakers talking about how great there school is and how great a few select students were I was thinking.  I was thinking about how cool some kids thought they were.  I was thinking about all the things that I remembered that I thought mattered.  When I look back, nothing in high school really mattered.  We cared about girls and relationships, who was popular, the basketball teams record, which high school rock band was the best etc.  Now, all those things and more have faded and literally mean nothing in my life.  It's weird to think of things that once meant so much to us and had so much value that now we couldn't care less about.  I imagine after college will be similar, and that life will always be that way.  Wherever you are at that time of your life your experiences will seem so important.  It was just really interesting I guess.  It's not a new concept by any means; our parents always told us not to worry about high school drama.  Of course, they were right but we never understood then.  I understand now and its just a bit bizarre.  Life is one crazy experience.

So what does this mean?  Does this mean that we shouldn't be concerned with our present situation because it won't matter in the future? Well . . . not exactly.  The point is we need to be able to discern what is important and what is trivial.  We can't focus on the things that won't matter to us later in life.  However, there are plenty of things we come across that will matter later in life.  Things like who we date in high school, and who won the thanksgiving tournament your junior year of basketball, are likely trivial when compared with getting good grades and reading the Bible.  Speaking of reading the Bible . . . I think I am going to go read 1 Thessalonians chapter 1.

My challenge for you is to think of some things that you used to think were important.  Maybe it was a fad, or a style of clothing.  Give yourself a good laugh.  Then think of things that you used to think were important and still do think are important.  This will give you a good place to start when looking for things that really matter in life. :)

Your friend, brother, and companion in Christ,
-Zachary Haas