In response to my desperate plea's for the Lord's help; the Lord send an encouraging word through my new Pastor via email. Read on, and may it minister to you as it did to me!
Greetings Lifers,
So I’m getting ready to go the gym this past week, right around lunch time, when I realize something is missing. Shorts? Check. Socks? Check. Shoes? Got both of those, too. What’s missing? My IPod - without this little miracle of modern technology the drudgery of my already labored running becomes a virtual death march in the humidity of the noonday sun. Some people like the quiet, and I suppose at times it soothes my soul, but not so much when it comes to the monotony of running. My music keeps my legs pumping – I get syncopated with the rhythm of the songs, get lost in the poetry of the lyrics, and before I know it I’ve reached my destination. So crucial to my trek is this device that I drive home to retrieve it before I my run commences. With some fortuitous stoplight sequences, I make it back to work in time. Operation “Pound the Pavement” is a “go”.
So fast forward through some brief stretching and the early portion of my run – I’m now at a point in the journey where I am as far from the office as I am close to my destination. The halfway point. It’s a kind of “hump day” in my daily run, a point where I know that most of the run is behind me, and what lies before me is still arduous, but imminently more doable than it seemed after my first few steps. I think we can all relate – everybody likes to see the finish line at the end of a long race.
My breathing and steps are in time with my music, I’m nearing the end, and all is well. All except the sky, that is.
I hadn’t checked the latest Doppler reading before I began running, but if I had I could have saved myself a drenching. I’m now ¾ of my way to my destination, and the sky is growing dark. I dismiss it as just one cloud, and figure that my blazing speed will serve me well in missing any real precipitation (note sarcasm). No sooner has this thought crossed my mind that the one cloud is joined by many, the wind starts to gust, and I feel those first drops that come with any storm. A light drizzle floats down around me, and soon my glasses need wipers that I don’t have, and I am covering the exposed IPod strapped to my arm with a sweaty shirt sleeve. “Keep going”, I tell myself, “it’s going to hold off until you get done”.
Not so much.
Ever been outside when a real nasty storm cloud is bearing down on your area and you can actually see the line where the rain is? As I’m running down the street, I see the wall of rain awaiting me, drops the size of sinks exploding off the pavement. This is going to get wet – fast.
I run through my options – turn and run from the cloud (physically impossible), hide under a porch to avoid getting wet (stupid, since I’m already muchos sweaty and damp from the drizzle, and stopping would significantly diminish my desire for and the impact of continued exercise), call a cab (no phone), or just go for it. Sure I’ll get wet, and my subsequent workout at the gym will be equal parts humiliating (ever work out in the form fitting wonder of saturated clothes?) and uncomfortable (wet clothes and shoes + air conditioning – energy sapped form running in the rain = uncomfortable). But the rain isn’t going away – I need to go through. So I do, wind howling, rain pelting, puddles splashing. I run through the rain to get where I need to go.
So here’s my question – have you started a journey, gotten past the halfway point and eased into cruising speed on the backstretch only to run into unthinkable storms along the way? Have these storms caused you to question your journey and given you pause in your progress? Let me remind you that God uses the storms to deepen us, to strengthen us, to challenge us. Sure it’ll be difficult, but in the end, the destination matters more than the conditions of the journey. So may you and I run with perseverance this race marked out for us. (Hebrews 12) May we pursue what God has for us through all of life’s obstacles and find ourselves right where we are intended to be. God never guaranteed an easy road, but He promises to walk it with us.
Free,
Mark Saunders
Senior Pastor
Bay Life Church
1017 Kingsway Road
Brandon, FL, 33510
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