It’s an unpopular opinion, but I really like Mondays.  Don’t get me wrong, I dread the end of the weekend as much as the next exhausted, coffee-dependent college student. But there’s something refreshing about the start of a new week. No matter how many classes I was late to, no matter how many tests I failed, no matter how many times I didn’t wake up early enough to do my Bible reading first thing, the week before is over. Monday is a new start. I get to try again. I get to reset. 

I’ve found a lot of ways I can “reset” myself, take a deep breath and start over. When I can feel my hundred pages of reading, three papers and two tests overwhelming me, I stop and reset. When I feel myself getting frustrated with people around me, I reset. When I’m really tired of chicken noodle soup again in the dining common when I really want potato soup, I reset. 

Perhaps the biggest way I reset is through sleep: the human equivalent of turning your computer off and back on again. 

My roommate loves to tell the story of when I slept through her vacuuming one morning. Didn’t even flinch. Just kept right on drooling into my pillow, covers over my head. 

But in all honesty, sleep is incredibly important.  There’s a biblical precedent for making sure you get enough rest to continue to function. When you’re tired, your patience grows thinner, your problems seem bigger and your anxiety level gets higher. The Christian life is a lot harder if you’re not getting adequate sleep—which is probably why God tells us to take good care of ourselves in 1 Corinthians. 

My second reset button is food. If I eat a meal before I get started on my mountain of homework, I get a second wind and can attack my books instead of letting them attack me. I reset. It’s almost as if energy is tied to food. Imagine that. 

There are other ways I reset daily. Listening to music, drinking a cup of coffee, reading a book. There are also times where I get a reset because everyone gets a reset. New Year’s, the beginning of a new semester and Mondays. I’ve even started finding a joy in the other bane of college student’s existence: mornings. 

I’ve realized that life is a series of resets. With each day, we get a second chance, a new beginning. With each new week, we get an opportunity to do better. With each new year, we start a new phase of our lives. 

But my biggest, my best, my most important reset is God. It sounds sacrilegious, God as a reset button. But God is the God of second chances: resets. He’s made us new creatures by salvation through the blood of Jesus Christ. He’s given us a second life. A reset. He asks us to come to Him and confess our sins, promising to be faithful and just to forgive us of our sins: a chance to make things right with Him, a reset. And at the end of our lives, He gives us the ultimate reset: eternal life with Him in paradise. 

We’re nearing the end of the semester, and I find myself resetting at the end instead of the beginning. But no one ever said resolutions had to be tied to the new year. As I’m growing tired and losing motivation, I go more and more to God to reset. To revive. 

Finish well. Reset. A new start is only a prayer and a good nap or a cup of coffee away.