Photo Credit: via calminggrace blog spot
Tip and tricks on maintaining your spiritual life during busy times
Joy Fan, Logos Editor
It may seem odd that I’m providing a list of tips and tricks on how to manage a balance between things when the school year is almost over. This is not lost on me. However, if any of you, dear readers, are anything like me, then it’s right about now in your semesters that things are becoming increasingly difficult to manage. And it is often during the busiest times in our life, when we need to rely on God most and hold steadfast to our faith, that we find ourselves sacrificing our time with God for other worldly endeavours. I am, admittedly, also guilty of this. So how can we balance our spiritual lives with our worldly responsibilities?
- Calendars. Planners. Schedules. Timetables. It doesn’t really matter what you want to call them, whether you use a digital or paper option, find a way to physically fix time slots. Personally, I’m a big fan of Google Calendar, and all my church/fellowship related activities are put in yellow, and all my courses in grey. Other colours are for other responsibilities, and each represents a different degree of urgency/topic. I never delete events in yellow.
- Reflect on your motivations of doing…well, anything. Are you trying to work to bolster your own pride? How are you glorifying God in your actions? Question yourself and ask yourself why you’re doing what you’re doing. Are you studying to get a good grade? What will the good grades get you? And what after that? What after all of it? This is not an excuse to become nihilistic, but rather to put things into perspective.
- Be honest with yourself. Ask yourself where your priorities are in terms of how you’ve been acting and compare that to what you want your priorities to look like. It’s always much harder to do than it is to say you’ll do, so be kind to yourself.
- Set spiritual goals. If you’re goal-oriented, this will be especially helpful. As someone who basically cannot accomplish anything without a deadline, I need markers to help me realize the passage of time and to properly reflect on what I’ve been doing. You do not need to be grand with your goals, like wanting to read the entire Bible in a month, but you should be concrete. Try something like: I want to have reached out to five of my non-believing friends by the end of the semester.
- Write things down. There’s a trend going around about manifestation, and while I don’t think you can manifest yourself into becoming a billionaire, I do think that if you believe you cannot become a billionaire then you won’t become one. It’s often difficult for us to just think hard enough to believe we’ll do something or stick to it. So, if you have a passing thought of what you want to do, write it down. If there’s something you want to do, but have had difficulty doing (last year, I was notoriously always late to church), write down your commitment, so that it’s harder to make excuses for.
- Rely on God. If you’re having a difficult time, the best thing you can do for yourself is to rest. Not by taking a 24-hour power “nap” (though that may be tempting), but to rest in God. You do not need to lean on your strength alone.
And that’s it! Simple? Yes. Easy? No.
Sometimes though, it is precisely the things that are difficult to accomplish that are worth doing.
