Evidence of God's Care

As of Friday at noon when I finished my last final exam for the semester, I am now officially halfway done with law school! And to tell the truth, it's gone by pretty fast, so I feel like it really won't be that long until I am a full-fledged attorney.

My last final, for my evidence class, was on Friday, and it was 50 multiple choice questions on the Federal Rules of Evidence. I already knew it was going to be a really difficult test, and because it was my last final coming at the end of three very busy weeks, I was really exhausted and overwhelmed trying to prepare for it last week. I also had a paper due Friday for another class that I was trying to finish, so I was trying to study as much as I could for this exam but it was pretty hard to do. I was just praying a lot that God would give me wisdom and insight on how best to prepare for the exam and to use my study time.

My professor had told our class a couple times during the semester that it would be a good idea to do the multiple-choice review questions in the back of the book. By the beginning of last week, I still hadn't done those questions, even though I had reviewed all the reading and made a study outline. Well, starting on Tuesday or Wednesday, I started feeling like I HAD to do those questions and that even if I didn't have time to do anything else to study, I needed to do those questions first. I had a strong impression that they were more important than studying my outline or reviewing the reading assignments.

I had to spend most of Wednesday and Thursday writing my paper for my other class, but Thursday night, when the feeling that I had to do those questions in the book hadn't gone away, I sat down to tackle them. The answers were in the book, and so I was able to check them as I went along. There were 200 in all, but I only managed to do 150 before I just fell asleep--it was 2am and the exam was in 7 hours and I just couldn't keep my eyes open anymore.

So on Friday morning, I got to the exam and start reading through it. It didn't take me long to realize that, with the exception of a couple names being changed, about half the exam questions were taken verbatim from ones in the book I had looked at mere hours before! Because of that, I was able to speed through questions that I otherwise would have really struggled with. I've never been so glad to have followed a professor's advice!

After I got home that day, I was flipping through the last 50 questions in the book--the ones that I didn't get to because I couldn't stay awake anymore. Maybe one or two of the questions I didn't get to had been on the exam, but literally all of the rest of them were from the section I managed to finish. To make a long story short, I was totally overwhelmed by God's concern for my life and the way He even cares about helping a tired law student with her evidence final! He definitely answered my prayers for wisdom on how to study!

I pray that YOU have felt His hand of grace in your life lately as well.

"I Can't Live Without Finding God"

So when I look at the statistics of how many page views I am getting on my blog, and what countries those viewers are coming from, I can also see what kinds of Google searches led people directly to my blog. Usually the search terms are just obvious, like the title of this blog or something about lawyers in this state and so on. But every once in awhile, someone stumbles across my blog by using some really unusual search terms.

Here's what it was a week or two ago: "I can't live without finding God." Someone, somewhere, put this search into Google and then found my blog as a result. I don't know who they are or where they are or what exactly they were hoping to find that day. But knowing that someone with such a desperate hunger for God, someone I almost certainly don't even know, is reading words I've written? That reminded me of what a responsibility I have to write in a way that glorifies God and points people to His grace.

Those of us who are Christians all have a tremendous responsibility to write and live and work and love in a way that points people to the hope we have in Christ. And honestly, this can be more important than ever when, via the Internet, people can peruse our lives in ways never imagined possible even 20 years ago.

This experience reminded me that I don't know everyone who reads this blog, or who looks at my Facebook page, or who observes the way I conduct myself in everyday life. For that matter, I interact with people every day that I don't know--whether it's the person who helps me at the drive-through or who swipes my student ID card at the gym or the random 1L I pass in the hallway or, indeed, the strangers who read my blog! We all have these interactions--are they positive? Do our lives exude the joy and compassion of Christ, even to people that we don't know? Would people be closer to understanding the grace of God as a result of their interaction with us?

Just some food for thought--and a reminder that the way we live DOES matter, even if we think no one is really looking.