Who are you?

"Are you a student who happens to be a Christian, or a Christian who happens to be a student?" This question was posed to me a couple of years ago, and on the spot I could only blink in response.

Our education system makes it difficult for school not to partially, if not totally, engulf our lives. The role of the school is no longer restricted to serving merely as an educational institution; everything from the development of our character to the pursuit of hobbies and extracurricular activities now also comes labelled in boxes within our timetables. 12-hour days are not uncommon, Saturdays in school are a regularity and spending the entire school holidays away from school is practically unheard of. My point: a very grand proportion of our time is spent in school or doing schoolwork, and I'm sure you will agree.

What tends to follow from this, unfortunately, is that we may start to think of ourselves as primarily students, then Christians. Attending FireAC becomes part of our routine as a student. Worship in chapel and morning devotions are part of our timetables. It often doesn't help that we feel continuously pressured to perform and to meet the expectations held of us as students. Consciously or (more often) not, our identity as a student whose primary aim is to secure our marks can easily override our identity as sons and daughters of Christ who strive to glorify God in even eating and drinking (1 Corinthians 10:31). We don't necessarily have to obliterate God from our lives for this to happen - instead, we might find ourselves treating God as a peripheral priority, slotting Him into what we mistake to be the grander scheme of things. Clearly, though, this is wrong - we are commanded to love the Lord our God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our strength (Deuteronomy 6:5) and not "whatever is left after I'm done studying".

But what else am I supposed to do? You might ask. By no means am I suggesting that it would be correct to ignore our homework so that we may spend more time in worship. No, today I challenge us not to give God a little bit more of our time, but to offer Him all of our time. Let us aim to achieve what was commanded in 1 Thessalonians 5:17: Pray continually! And to acknowledge the Lord in every situation of our lives, to see every circumstance through a Christian perspective. To be Christians who happen to be students.