Last week I wrote about flunking out of school. Funny, here's a submission right out of the blue about someone else's school experience!

RC

On the first day of science we were put into 2 groups of about 16 people each for a learning exercise. The goal was to pass a tennis ball to all team mates as fast as possible with only three rules. l.) The ball couldn't touch anything but humans. 2.) The ball had to be passed in alphabetical order to all players. 3.) The ball couldn't touch more than two people at once. And oh by the way, we were timed.

Our group went into a large circle and lifelessly handed off the ball to the person next to them, giving us a time of 8 seconds. Our teacher saw our result and told us to split the time in half. We did the exact same thing of handing off the ball but this time with some enthusiasm and we got 6 seconds. He told us to cut that time in half. So like pure "geniuses" we tried to get a faster time doing the same thing over and over again but we never got under 6 sec. Our teacher then said to us "why are you doing the same thing again and again if you know you won't get your desired results." A light bulb went on in our heads and we tried several different ways to get the desired time. Each time our teacher expected more and more of us, and we finally got (no joking) less than half a second of time to pass the ball to each person in our 16 person group.

This got me to realize there may be trials and temptations we think we can't overcome, but we need to "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean riot oil your own understanding. " -Prov 3:5. We need to trust the Lord when it is said about Him that "...God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able,... " -1 Cor 10:13. If my teacher would have told us we had to pass the ball to all 16 people in less than half a second, we would have thought it impossible and given up right from the start. Why is that? I think it's because we have it in our heads what we can and can't do. Whenever we think in a tough trial/situation we aren't strong enough of a Christian, don't know what to say to someone, or that a load is way too much for us to bear, we need to remember Paul's statement `I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. " - Phil.4: l 3

Lastly, we need to realize that just like in the experiment if we try to overcome our trials by the same way over and over again and it doesn't work we need to find another way to overcome temptations otherwise it probably won't work. For example, if we are trying to bear the burden ourselves and we are not successful, we need to ask others for help as we read in "We then who are strong ought to bear with the scruples of the weak, and not to please ourselves. " Rom 15:1. Whatever we are trying to overcome and however we try to solve it we must always rely on God's help and strength and not our own.

Josh Abeyta