When Your Future Looks Hazy

This morning, my wife and I have arrived on the campus of the Christian college that our daughter will be attending as a freshman this fall. Of course, the excitement that we have for her and her future is off the charts!

The entire process of checking in, finding one’s dorm assignments, getting a mug shot for your ID card (my first card was a real picture laminated & pressed onto an ID card – yes, very ancient!), carrying one’s entire belongings into a dorm room, meeting new roommates, figuring out how you are going to share that small room with three other roommates and all of their stuff, and trying to process the myriad of other tidbits of information is exhilarating for an 18-year-old moving away from home for the first time.

We are thankful that our daughter chose to attend a Christian college. And although a Christian college is not God’s will for everyone, I believe there are so many benefits to attending one. Here are a few:

1. An environment that cultivates, yea, encourages Christian growth.
2. Other Christians. Specifically, Christian friends. After having lived for nearly 44 years, I am more and more convinced of the wisdom that Solomon dispensed in Proverbs concerning friends. “He that walketh with wise men shall be wise…” I still have good, godly friends from the days when I attended a Christian college many years ago.
3. A better chance at meeting a future spouse who shares the same values you do.
4. Faculty & staff that actually want to help you in your Christian growth
5. Chapel messages by seasoned men of God. Although I don’t remember many of the hundreds of messages I heard over my years of college, each one of them added to the molding and growing process at a pivotal time in my life.

After helping our daughter get all of her belongings into her room (and there were MANY of them), I went back to the motel to pick up some more items. On the way back to the college campus, I took our van through a car wash. On the way through the wash, water flooded the windshield and I couldn’t see very well…my vision was hazy. I could not see forward very well.

As I look back to the year 1990, my freshman year of college, everything about my future looked hazy. I didn’t know for certain what I should major in (I changed my major three times at the first college I attended), didn’t know but a couple of people on a campus of thousands, didn’t know how I was going to pay for years of college, and didn’t have a clue who I would possibly meet that would one day become my wife.

However, I knew One person. And although I didn’t know Him like I do now, I knew that if I trusted God, He would take all of the twists and turns of my “hazy future” and eventually bring it into focus. Little did I know then that I would eventually graduate with a degree in Computer Science. Little did I know then that I would make lifelong friends who have continued to challenge me in my walk with God. Little did I know then that I would meet my one and only wife who has been the best thing that ever happened to me outside of my salvation in Christ.

To be honest, I could not have foreseen all of the twists and turns, burdens and blessings, mountains and valleys. But God saw all of them and He used them to help me become the person I am today. And there are times when the future still looks hazy. But I know I can trust the Creator of this world to bring life into a sharp focus in His time.

And so I say this to my daughter today…when the future looks hazy and you cannot seem to bring things into focus, do the following: 1) slow down, 2) breathe, and 3) trust the One you have trusted since you accepted Him as your Saviour as a young girl. He will bring all of the right things into focus at the right time. Your mom and I love you and we will be praying that God guides you into all that He has for you. He has a plan for your life…even if right now things look a little hazy.