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| Jason Jewell Class of 2017 |
What do you believe or whom do you believe in? These aren’t questions most people stop to think about very often. It is often not until major moments in our life that we really stop and ask what do I believe in? For me that question produces a much different answer than it would have before I began college or even last year. My beliefs are evolving, becoming stronger, more specific and creating a version of myself more passionate and more determined. I believe that Jesus Christ is our Savior and that he came to spread a message of love that we always fall short of even on our best days.
I have grown up in a generation, that does not value organized religion and for 19 of 21 years, I was complicit in this belief. I would say things like “My faith is strong but my religion is weak.” I partially understand that sentiment, I grew up surrounded by people who grew up in church and still believed yet stopped attending, and others who stopped believing. I wasn’t forced to go to church as a kid, which was probably a good thing because like most people I more than likely would have run from it the first chance I got. Through all those years I always believed in God yet every Sunday morning I found more value in sleep than a sermon.
It would take a wake up call to my life for me to begin to set a wake up call every Sunday morning. There were no flames, no crash to save me from, no life or death situation in that second but he saved me that day; he saved me from my own worst enemy. I would be lying if I said that fear wasn’t the reason I went to Church that first Sunday, I would be lying if I said that in that moment I understood the magnitude of what was happening. For a time I found myself in a pew only to check that box of the to do list, as if my half-hearted presence in that pew was better than the years prior that I had spent whole-heartedly in bed.
Somewhere along the way I traded that sleep for the sermon. One day the pastor wasn’t just talking about an abstract idea or telling a fairy tell but he was telling stories of people just like you and I. When I began to be wholeheartedly present, I began to feel in ways that I never quite felt. My faith is constantly growing, because I choose to invest in it each and everyday. When you want to know what someone values look where they put their resources. Sundays aren’t about appeasing some quota but about myself and my God. They are about praising a God for all that he has done for me and those I hold dear, for blessings that I would have never imagined, and for a sacrifice I have all too often taken for granted. sleep. It is because of my relationship with God that I have faith when I fall, that even on my darkest days there is a light, and that I know through him all things are possible. It took me 20 years to learn that a sermon is more valuable than sleep, that I feel more rejuvenated and ready for the week after a word on God than after a full nights. I don’t pretend that the church is perfect, I don’t believe that I have all the right answers but I do believe in Jesus and I hope you do too because that’s where it all begins.
Jason Jewell is a junior McConnell Scholar at the University of Louisville. He studies political science and economics.