Fall is just around the corner and school has started. Six years ago, I started university and since then I like to think I’ve learned quite a bit (and yet the more I learn, the more I realize just how little I actually know). Both in my faith, and in my knowledge of the world my classes, friends, and experience have taught me so much. There are however, some things that I wish I more deeply knew going in back then and seeing as the year just started, it is a fitting time to share the biggest one: time is short.

I remember it felt like so long the first time I came to my school and started classes. Coming to a new country where no one knew me was at once scary as it was liberating. There were things to navigate of course, like how did I get healthcare, where were various resources, or where were classes in addition to making friends, getting involved in clubs, and whatever else, but I took them all in stride because this was my new reality. Four years, another quarter more of my life! But even if it is a quarter, it is a short quarter.

It’s far easier to see just how short your time if you count the weeks of a passing semester. Twelve weeks per semester, two semesters per year, four years to a degree, each week is one percent. Each week you spend learning in classes, laughing with friends over impossible quizzes during 3 AM study parties, or sleeping in through your first class is one percent of the choices that you will make during your time in university. Put this way we should realize that nothing we have in this time is insignificant; everything should be done with true deliberation.

For young Christians, this is doubly true because university is an important ground that ultimately can determine the shape of life to come. Faced with our first taste of freedom, it then becomes for us to choose what we put first. In freedom, we choose which way to orient our lives, and in freedom we see a reflection of just who we are in relation to the call of Christ.

One of the most famous statements of Christ is the summary of the law “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And the second is like it, you shall love your neighbour as yourself.” Of course, this is Christian love, which is not an emotion but an assent of the will carried out in action, to will the good of the other as other. Ultimately then for the Christian it is love that orders our priorities, first to God, then to others, and finally to ourselves. Here are five things which I think are indispensable in this goal.

• Commit to a local church. Four years is a long time. Especially if you are away from home, the commitment to a church is the first priority of any Christian. More than any club, more than any class, it is the church that we find our spiritual home. In instructing us to not forsake the gathering of believers, the author of Hebrews instructs us that the local church is the place where we see Christ across different ages, economic groups, and circumstances. It should be a place where we can invest to help raise children, as well as receive the sound instruction of the Word. In seeking a church, seek a church that is not entirely like yourself; church is meant to be uncomfortable and we can grow through our discomfort to love our neighbours as ourselves.
• Commit to Christian community. Whether this community is a club on campus, or a small group at church, community is necessary. We need Christian friends that we can walk with and talk with in order to work through our daily struggles. We were never meant to go through the Christian life alone so make it a point every week to try and meet up with other believers outside of an hour or two on Sunday morning.
• Count others higher than yourself. In love, we are to will the good of the other as other. That is to say, we are not to make them like ourselves but let them find in themselves the best person that they can be. We do this by making deep and lasting friendships. More than classes, these friendships shape and change us and propel us to become more mature people.
• Build community with your classmates. We shouldn’t be sheltered as Christians. Build strong friendships with your classmates. Your values will clash, but it is only by making friends with those outside of the church that we let our light shine. These friends will help you through class, and in many ways they too can help you through your own struggles from day to day.
• You are here to study. This is your goal. The degree is the initial end. Remember that every class is something like 15-30 dollars and when you roll out of bed and slap the alarm, remember that by skipping class you could have bought a fancy lunch. You do yourself a disservice by not focusing on your studies, and by forgetting the entire reason you are in university. Learning is one of the greatest privileges that an individual has, and in university you have that privilege.

My first few months transitioning to university were difficult. It was so hard to wake up for church without parents, but I did and each week I choose to go to church, to seek God, and to build my faith. It was hard to commit to Christian community. My campus fellowship met up on Friday, the day that literally every major club event on campus seemed to happen. At the beginning, I flip-flopped sometimes I choose to take extra events for yearbook or the school newspaper, but more and more I realized how much I valued the community I became part of and by the end I couldn’t conceive of missing a week without a major reason. It is hard to count others higher than myself; sometimes friends would ask for help for major things in their lives on days I had assignments and helping them meant a lower mark and no sleep. But I find now that those relationships are worth so much more than the marks I would have gotten on assignments I don’t even remember anymore. It was hard to connect with classmates, but in the end my classmates became some of my best friends. And It was hard to study but in the end I somehow made it to graduate school, and without studying that would have been impossible.

Not one of these priorities is easy, and at the beginning I certainly chose other priorities over these, or disordered these priorities. Ultimately, principles only exist in difficulty and it is not principled to choose something easy. In Galatians Paul writes that it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. So let us be free. Week by week, percent by percent, with the help of prayer, and the encouragement of scripture we can orient our lives around Christ, focus our service to others, and rightly place ourselves in God’s grand world.