I wasn't planning on hearing from God today. And I most certainly wasn't expecting to hear from him during math class. But God rarely works the way we think he will, does he?
Let me back up. The last few days have been not-so-good days. I've been overwhelmed with studying for finals and finishing a college application. It all culminated in being crabby, distant from God, and well, sinful. Yesterday, I received a wake-up call that wasn't very pleasant. I knew that I needed God's forgiveness and I knew he was offering it, but for some reason something just wasn't working. I went to school today feeling frustrated and tired of trying to get my faith to "work." Not only that, but I felt unworthy of God and unable to come before him. I felt like my sin had lowered his opinion of me. I entered math class having temporarily and conveniently forgotten about all of that. It was time to learn, not to try to figure out my spiritual life.
Today we started talking about computing the average rate of change for a function. It's basically finding the slope between two given points of a line that isn't just a straight line. The first function we worked with looked something like this:
We computed the average rate of change and found that it was equal to one. My teacher started explaining what this meant. "Is the graph always increasing by one on that interval?" he asked. "No," he continued. "Look, at first it's moving up, but all of a sudden it goes back down. But then what does it do? After going down, it goes back up." And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, my mindset completely shifted from math to my life. Suddenly, although he didn't know it, my teacher was no longer talking about algebraic functions. He was speaking directly to me.
He kept talking. "But even though the graph is going up and down, there is a constant, overall, average increase of one. Even though it goes up and down, by the time you get to point b, the graph has increased." And right then, I knew that this was God speaking. I knew that this was something more than just graphs and the average rate of change. God was using this math lesson to speak to me. God knows my sin, God knows that I don't treasure him as he deserves, God knows my weaknesses. And yet, he continues to pursue me and to make sure that I know that I am His. My life may go up for a while. And then, like it did yesterday, it may crash back down. But God will make certain that overall, there is an average increase of one. I am His child, and He will sanctify me.
Let me back up. The last few days have been not-so-good days. I've been overwhelmed with studying for finals and finishing a college application. It all culminated in being crabby, distant from God, and well, sinful. Yesterday, I received a wake-up call that wasn't very pleasant. I knew that I needed God's forgiveness and I knew he was offering it, but for some reason something just wasn't working. I went to school today feeling frustrated and tired of trying to get my faith to "work." Not only that, but I felt unworthy of God and unable to come before him. I felt like my sin had lowered his opinion of me. I entered math class having temporarily and conveniently forgotten about all of that. It was time to learn, not to try to figure out my spiritual life.
Today we started talking about computing the average rate of change for a function. It's basically finding the slope between two given points of a line that isn't just a straight line. The first function we worked with looked something like this:
 |
| {it's the graph on the left} |
He kept talking. "But even though the graph is going up and down, there is a constant, overall, average increase of one. Even though it goes up and down, by the time you get to point b, the graph has increased." And right then, I knew that this was God speaking. I knew that this was something more than just graphs and the average rate of change. God was using this math lesson to speak to me. God knows my sin, God knows that I don't treasure him as he deserves, God knows my weaknesses. And yet, he continues to pursue me and to make sure that I know that I am His. My life may go up for a while. And then, like it did yesterday, it may crash back down. But God will make certain that overall, there is an average increase of one. I am His child, and He will sanctify me.
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