Stop the waiting

I often feel in college we are in this limbo stage of our lives. We aren't kids anymore, yet we aren't full adults.  Yes, we all can drive, buy cigs and are practically living on our own, but we aren't in that adult stage of our lives with careers, husbands and wives or kids.

We are here, yet we are striving for something so close that seems so far away. So for most of you, you party, drink and say, "I'll quit when I get out of school." When we get married we are still waiting, for that part of our lives filled with cribs, bottles and strollers. And then once you have children you are waiting for them to go to college, begin retirement. And then you get sick, and what you've been putting off your entire lives is here.

How do you feel about a divine power, where you are headed and every spiritual decision that seemed far ahead is now at your doorstep? Death feels a whole lot fresher and real. For some of us, that's how our lives will be, an endless cycle of waiting, we may not feel like it, but it's what we are doing.

Some of us, sadly, may not make it past college, or marriage. Some of us won't live to be able to sit down and have a concentrated moment with ourselves to decide how we do feel about creation, God and everything in between.

You'll decide eventually. You'll stop drinking eventually. That boy you've been with and the hurt you feel at the end of the night when he leaves your bed will end eventually. He'll grow up, your smoking will stop and everything will fall together like the pieces of a puzzle. But what if it doesn't?

Why do you keep waiting? Life should not be about waiting, but it should be about living. Living in freedom, not chained to all these things that bind you. It's about being free by not having any fear in death. 

Whoever you are, reading this column, I pray you aren't another person who waited your entire life to start living. I pray that you stop holding off and deciding, because even if you aren't making a decision you still are.

Jesus, God in human form, entered this broken and battered world we live in. The king of all creation humbled himself to a man. He was pure and blameless, and he chose to live among the creation that had turned its back on him. He lived a pure and sinless life, a life of a servant even though he should have been an all powerful king. He lived among this crooked world and saved us because we couldn't save ourselves. He died on the cross for our sins and rose three days later. He came so that we may have a relationship with him, so that we will no longer waste our lives, no longer be bound to the sins that hold us down but have freedom in him. He has done all the work. Now all we have to do is love him and admit that this endless cycle we are living in is wasting our lives and there is nothing we can do to fix it. We must surrender to him and let it all go. He died with our sin upon his shoulders, and he will free you from it all. So stop waiting, stop holding off for the next phase in your life and start living.

Contact Krysalea Burns at burns116@marshall.edu.