By Irene Kwan, InterHigh Mentor, Senior @ UC Berkeley
Throughout this winter break, with so much more time on my hands, I have been able to draw closer to God by spending more time on self-reflection. I considered many of the obstacles this past semester which kept me from facing my own personal struggles and thus, from drawing closer to God. Each semester, I see my faith and desire to know God fluctuating, usually toward a downward path. I become more apathetic and less willing to serve. However, God is always so timely and I came across this passage from Hebrews 12: 1-3:

To help me better understand this verse, a pastor at my home church in SF gave an interesting analogy regarding verse 1. Last year, he had participated in a half marathon which started early in the morning. Because it was very cold in SF, many people wore sweatsuits rather than the typical runner’s shorts and t-shirt. Eventually, they realized that the heavy clothing hindered them from running their best, and so they had to take off those extra layers and abandon them on the side of the road in order to finish the race.

For me, I need to first recognize what exactly hinders me from working on my relationship with God. The most obvious obstacles have to do with how I prioritize my time. As I reflect on my activities during winter break, I see that I squander my time on email, internet, and idling at home. These require very little effort and thinking. Even though there were different issues or easily reversible habits (e.g. laziness) that I had delayed for the winter break to try to resolve, I find myself fearful and reluctant to do so. I realized that my pride and desire to remain comfortable place a wall between me and God. However, when I fix my eyes on Jesus and the degree to which he endured – dying on the cross for my sins – I recognize that I am just a rebellious, undeserving sinner at the core.

I see that God never wants me to “grow weary and lose heart.” He wants me to take concrete steps to “throw off everything that hinders.” First, I need to “throw off” my strong grip on time. One way I try to do this is by giving my mornings to God. I spend time on reflection and devotionals. I also try to rid myself of distractions that could cause me to lose focus of God throughout the day. I try to restrict my internet usage to just email, and also limit my email usage to once or twice a day. In order to relate more personally and deeply with God, I need to have a consistent prayer life. Before, I found myself putting off prayer or simply forgetting to pray. I used to pray every night, but I would be overcome by sleepiness. The hindrance to prayer, I realized, is my laziness and lack of desire. Now I am starting to write down the specific things I will pray for each day, and then set aside a later time to do so. What also hinders me from coming to know, understand, and love God more is my tendency to be very self-focused. I not only lose sight of God in my life, but also the people around me – family and friends. Thus, I include in my prayer list, the people who I am trying to love, reach out to, or who are in difficult situations. I make the effort to call up and visit them. All of these seem so simple, yet they are very hard to do when the competitors are media, fun, and comfort. I just have to remember that Jesus did so much more for me. The least I can do is to personally relate with God in every way I can, being productive and intentional (spiritually) with my time and efforts.