Spring break has ended. School has resumed. There is an assignment due Monday and a test on Thursday. 

Some corner of my mind laments that I am no longer able to enjoy what it deems "normal life" -- that school thing once again rears its bothersome head and begins to take its place as the elephant in the room that is my schedule.

But this is normal life. I don't just mean the mathematical fact of percentage-of-time for the one outweighing the other; I mean the fact that I am alive and breathing in another day which God has laid before me.

Not another week or month or however-long-until-semester-end; just another day. This is the day the Lord has made, I try to remind myself, I will rejoice in be glad in it (whether I like it or not)!

Clearly I have a perspective problem. I'm not just called to survive each day (with its work and school and homework) begrudgingly until I can manage to come to day's end and clamber into the bed to sleep satisfied simply with escaping another relatively intact.

I'm called to glorify God. I'm called [never to grow weary in doing good, but to seize every opportunity.][1] I'm called [not to be slothful, but fervent in spirit, serving the Lord][2] -- by remaining constant in prayer.

I don't see any exception made in those verses for the time that my mind has fabricated as prior to "real life". "Real life" is now -- it's from the moment that God placed me on earth until the moment He takes me from earth (and better still -- it continues from there!)

Just because I don't have a degree doesn't mean I can't glorify God in my work -- rather because I'm still jumping through the hoops of college, I have more opportunities to exalt Him. More opportunities to share with classmates the peaceful shelter found in the unwavering unchanging truth of the Gospel. This time I'd thought was wasted in classrooms with unneeded material (because let's be fair, who really needs to memorize analog-to-analog signal conversion methods) is instead a frontline where I am called to serve.

So I pray that God strengthens me to seek Him in everything -- in "real life" and real life -- and know that He is able to make His glory known through me despite my weakness.

Especially when the homework is due Monday and the test is Thursday.

[1]: http://www.esvbible.org/Galatians 6:9-10/ [2]: http://www.esvbible.org/Romans 12:11/