Earn It
by Jacob Thomsen
I recently watched the movie Saving Private Ryan. If anyone has not seen it, it is a tremendous movie about a group of soldiers in World War 2 who embark on a special mission to save a soldier with the last name of Ryan whose three brothers had already died in the war. They were to save him and return him to his mother. Along the way, most of the soldiers in the unit paid the ultimate sacrifice to save this soldier. At the end of the movie, one of the soldiers who had sacrificed his life for this Private tells him in an emotional moment of last words to “earn it.”
That was certainly a powerful moment in the film, and it led me to think, what do we do to “earn it?” What do we do to earn the lives that we have been given? This is sort of a deep question to be pondering at 23 years old. Is the answer enjoying a wonderful marriage, raising great kids, and retiring after a long, successful career? I’m not sure.
The true answer to the question of whether we can earn the lives we’ve been given is “no”. The only thing that we can do is be thankful that we have a Savior who sacrificed all so that we may have eternal life. What a gift! Another thing we can do is live by God’s Word. Of course, we fall short all the time; we can’t be perfect. That is why we have our perfect Savior, Jesus Christ.
One very important thing we can do is live by God’s calling on our lives. In fact, one of the ways I came to know Jesus was through a number of struggles on my way to finding out what I am supposed to do with my life. During my sophomore year of college at the University of Mary, I spent many long nights trying to work through some inadequacies I had, in order to pursue my degree in biology with a pre-med focus. For a long time, I wanted to be a doctor and thought I was going to continue a line of Dr. Thomsens in my family.
There’s a quote from Scripture that was highlighted to me when I needed it most. Proverbs 16:9 says, “A man’s heart plans his way, But the Lord directs his steps.” I learned a very important lesson when I was a very young Christian: to trust God in all His plans for my life. In those moments of struggle, I heard God’s calling on my life. Conveniently, I still had time to change my major before the second semester. I went to my advisor’s office and switched my major to Politics.
My goal from this point on was to find a place where I could work with politics in harmony with my faith. In my senior year, I was a bit worried about simply finding a job, let alone one that fulfilled my goal of working at a place where my faith would reflect the work I was doing. I prayed about it and eventually was presented with the opportunity to work for NDFA. There were other jobs that my advisor had pointed out to me, but when he told me about this one, it really stuck out. I applied and the rest is history.
I fully believe that it has been God’s will for me to work for NDFA. I was called into politics and have been able to work to stand up for and promote Christian values at the state level. It truly is a blessing to work here.
Have I earned it? I don’t think so. But the biggest thing I can do is give thanks to Him for pointing me here and try to live by His Word daily to the best of my ability. God is a tremendous Father and has given me the opportunity to do something I love. For that, I can’t help but say thank you to you, for supporting NDFA and allowing us to get to this point, but most importantly, to God for allowing NDFA to grow.