Back in November, my English teacher, the leader of the APES, assigned my class a massive amount of work in order to "battle our senioritis". Well, it didn't work. However, her "OP"s or Occasional Papers transformed my way of looking at the world. Oddly enough, I didn't realize that until recently, but anyway, back to the OPs. It was basically an essay that embodied the quote "food for thought". It was entirely about finding the deeper meaning in even the most minute and seemingly pointless moments of life and delving in and dissecting them to illustrate the bigger, more poignant meanings of life. Like I said, it got me thinking, observing.
On June 26, 2015, SCOTUS made a ruling. Obviously everyone knows to which ruling I am referring, but for the sake of posterity, I'll name it. That was the day that SCOTUS ruled gay marriage legal in the United States of America. I won't go deeply into my views right now simply because that is a topic for a different post, but I will say that I believe what the Bible says about homosexuality being a sin, so I do not agree with the ruling. But its the Holy Spirit's job to convict, God's job to judge, and my job to love (Billy Graham). With the Lord as my savior and guide, I can't, in good conscious, not mention Jesus when I mention that SCOTUS ruling. But back to how this relates to OPs. One of the first things that struck me about the ruling was the impact it would have not on me, but on my future rugrats. My rugrats will have an entirely different upbringing than I did because the world they grow up in will be different than mine. So far, in my 18 years of life, homosexuality has gone from barely being mentioned or seen, to practically shoved in your face. By the time my kids are my age, the ruling will not be a new thing anymore, but something that has been ingrained in the world for the past few decades. I can't even begin to guess how that will influence the way they interpret and process the world.
After realizing that their world had just changed years before they've even been born or truly thought of, I saw the connection in my own life. My short life has seen the inauguration of the first black president, a massive world depression, the marriage between royalty and a commoner, but nothing more impactful that the events of what happened on September 11th, 2001. Nothing has impacted me than growing up in a post 9/11 world. Terror, terrorism, terrorists, they splatter our newspapers, tvs, news apps on an almost daily basis. Some how death and violence has become a regular thing, and my generation, myself included, has become desensitized to all of it. How on Earth can you ever grow desensitized to something so gruesome? I guess, when you spend your entire life hearing about it, you never get the chance to know a world that isn't constantly on high alert, constantly terrified of everything from planes to gas to suicide bombers hiding weapons of terror in their unassuming standard issue backpack.
Despite everything, I know that as screwed up as this world is, I know i'm growing up in the right one, the right set of circumstances. I know that every event has happened precisely as it should according to God's ultimate plan, and everything has only contributed to my world view, the way I interpret the world, my experiences and those around me. I know that I am exactly where I need to be, I know everything I need to know, because my God has everything in His hands, and He puts me exactly where I'm needed to do the most for His kingdom. It is all in His name.
