College students are of a different mind than most people.  It’s a selfish, compulsive, and erratic mind.  Day to day it’s class after class, test after test, event after event.  No time to think things through.  It’s a life driven by the hope of future success and financial comfort.  It’s bragging about your brains and showing off your ambition. We are made to believe that our course of study is an addition to who we are as people.  I’m Barry the chemistry major!  I’m Heather the human development major!  Jered Communications!  Philip “Political Science” Waggoner.  JD the… Physicist?  (False.)  We are forming our future exam by exam.  Writing ourselves future paychecks by writing ourselves good essays and turning them in on time.  It stresses us out (It stresses me out), and we obsess over it to the point of exhaustion.

But we are kids.  We throw parties. We throw frisbees.  We like video games and cartoons.  When we get the newspaper we glance at the cover and go straight to the Sudoku and the comics at the back.  Really.  Our loves are temporary and unstable.  Relationships are bipolar and advance much too quickly.  We live in tiny rooms and ride bikes everywhere, eating in cafeterias and drinking coffee from the cart in the library on campus.  Our world is not real.  The future will confuse my generation.  My generation will be confused why Barrack Obama didn’t get elected even though they wore Cold-War era propaganda style t-shirts with their “Messiah” on them every day and went around in their cars from house to house stealing McCain/Palin yard signs.  My generation is confused about our prayer habits and alcohol-free parties.  We are kids who don’t understand.

 

I am kid and I don’t understand.

 

I don’t understand what I’m learning.  I can’t calculate the magnetic field vector of a cylindrical solenoid in three steps like the Engineering boys can and I don’t know how to write a C++ program that will calculate the increasing value of rare Wizard Of Oz books.  It means nothing to me.  I am crippled by my apathy.  I don’t how to study.  I can’t lock myself away in the library for five hours like my room mates.  I do not care enough to ever do something like that.  They do that almost daily.  

 

But I led worship this morning at my church and it was great.  I sang “I Could Sing of Your Love Forever” and meant it from my heart.  I led “Create In Me a Clean Heart” from an electric piano and felt so much at home.  Tonight I played drums at Youth Group and it was a blast.  I am myself under such circumstances.  This weekend I missed my own cousin’s big wedding for a Calc test that I hopelessly flunked.  I was bitter and I felt like I failed my family in two ways.  Solving integrals at two in the morning I am depressed and tired.  I look at my Physics homework and roll my eyes.  I don’t care and I’m not concerned.

 

But I need to care.  I need to be motivated!  I need to do everything as unto the Lord!  He’s given me an INCREDIBLE opportunity to succeed at a great school.  I am amazingly lucky to have a University Education, or even live where that’s a feasible option.  I need God to make me care?  (That would not be a smooth operation)  So I say to myself:

 

Change my heart, oh God

Make it ever new.

Change my heart, oh God.

May I be like You.

 

You are the Potter,

I am the clay.

Mold me and make me,

This is what I pray…

Change my heart oh God, make me ever new.  Help me play this part, help me shine like you.  Amongst a people who seek satisfaction in losing themselves as they establish themselves, may I be clay that only the master potter can shape.  I am fully confident in a bright future full of blessings and favor.  He has promised me that.