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[This post is one of a series of potential Christian plaques that we would never find at a Christian bookstore. See the rest of the list here.]
I do happen to be a member of my state's cattle raiser's association, and I believe I've just found our divine endorsement:
I know I’m not alone in needing to drop a little weight. Not only will it make me healthier, but it’ll make me feel better and enjoy my life more. Voices in various media make all kinds of promises for easy ways to drop this weight. But in my core (which needs the most exercise) I know the answer: walking…with Jesus. See, the weight I’m talking about dropping is not excess fat and flab. This weight comes from fear and judgment and all that is bound up with them. And yes, the culture offers all kinds of quick fixes. And yes, I’m finding that Jesus offers the only “program” that truly takes the weight off.
I suppose what I really want from Jesus is to be free from fear, to walk in the freedom that can only come from an assured faith that he is walking with me. This faith in the constant presence of the Master (which, after all, he promised in Mt. 28) is a peace and a pace, a joyful stride through day-by-day life that comes from knowing that there is no obstacle I will meet that he can’t overcome, no question I will ask that he can’t answer, no path I will encounter that leads to better destinations, no master more deserving of my submission and allegiance.
Read MoreIn a comment to my last post on Courage to Run, Daniel ask me to share about when I started running and why. I plan to do that in this post. But I also took his question to mean more than simply the physical aspects of the answer: it happened on this day, at this time, etc. In my posts, I’ve been talking about the spiritual aspect of running, how it fulfills our potentiality, how it helps us realize our essential being, our ontological essence. So it seems to me that the question is fundamentally not about when I physically started running and why, but about when there was a change in my ‘self,’ in how I understood my nature, in how my world became reoriented. In other words, when did I become a runner? When was the shift made? When did I move from simply running—from being someone who runs—to being a runner?
I’ve written about this before. Part of this post is a reworking of some of that earlier writing. That earlier writing captures the act in process, as it was happening. I’ve added a little biographical information to sort of set the stage. I have also added some after-thoughts about what I was thinking at the time to help flesh things out, but essentially the ideas are the same. When did I become a runner?
I have been active for most of my life. In High School I was a rock climber. I spent many hours in the Colorado Mountains climbing to the top of rocks, and when I wasn’t climbing I was thinking about climbing. After that I got into racing bicycles. This is perhaps the start of my emphasis on obtaining maximum fitness. I ended up racing for many years, both road bikes and Mountain bikes, and I still love to ride. At that time I also dipped, a bit, into the world of running just for fun. I did some 10k around Colorado Springs, a 10 miler in the Garden of The God’s, and even the Pikes Peak Marathon (just the ascent). But all during that time I still considered myself a bike racer. Running was just something I did to help my fitness and for fun. I really wasn’t a runner.
Read MoreWe usually think–with good reason based on our experience–that the thing that separates us from God is our sin. Without question, it has that effect. But if St. Paul’s statement is true that “where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness,” part of what that means is that our separation from God, and our sin, are both significantly different than we think. As we recently described, grace is bigger than we think–it's accessible in abundance, long before we know anything about it, and it is available every day of our lives, to every single human being.
Because of that, I think James Bryan Smith hits the nail on the head when he says, "It is not my sin that moves me away from God, it is my refusal of grace, both for myself and for others."*
The practical difference this can make in our lives is monumental. If identifying and avoiding sin is our focus, and if we are dedicated people, then we may become obsessed with trying to figure out the right place to drawn the lines about what is sin and what isn't–so that we can be sure about what things belong on the “don’t” list (both in our own lives and–Lord, have mercy–in the lives of those around us).
Read MoreI don’t remember being afraid of the dark. I’m sure I went through normal childhood nyctophobia, and I certainly have those moments as an adult in which I’m fearful about some unknown noise outside at night or in a dark house. But there’s a deeper fear of a deeper dark with which I’m all too familiar.
In Ascent of Mt. Carmel, John of the Cross talks about faith as darkness, and that one who wants to live in union with God must enter the dark. This dark faith is opposed to senses and intellect, i.e. opposed to outward circumstances and our constant struggle to figure out how everything will work out and how we can position ourselves for the best possible outcome.
We are afraid of the dark, and that fear of stepping into the unknown is understandable. But the problem, all too often, is the reason for the fear. It isn’t because we know there will be struggle and that we must learn to walk by faith rather than by sight. The reason for our fear is because we are sure that we are all alone. Surely there is no one there to lead us into the light. Is there even any light at all?
Read MoreNext spring will mark the twentieth anniversary of my graduation from Homedale High School, located in Homedale, Idaho, a small farming community located 45 minutes west of Boise on the banks of the Snake River. After graduation I left town, first to college, and then to life. The first couple of summers I came home to work during the summers, but after my junior year of college Heidi, my lovely bride, and I were married, and then only made my presence in Homedale to visit my parents. A few years ago my parents moved to Caldwell, a city twenty minutes away, and my reasons for visiting Homedale were few.
I loved growing up in Homedale, and have very fond memories of doing so. I also remember some times in junior high and high school that weren’t the best. Regardless, when I graduated from high I couldn’t wait to leave and spent the next sixteen years away from Homedale and the state of Idaho. Three years ago, this October, I moved back to Homedale with my family (Heidi and our three boys), feeling called by God to do so.
One of the things I have enjoyed the most about being back in Homedale and the state of Idaho is taking my family to explore places I visited as a child and a youth. A few weeks ago, for vacation, we spent the better part of five days in the Boise National Forest camping on the Middle Fork of the Payette River north of Crouch, Idaho–one of the many places I remembered camping with my family as a child. We stayed in a rustic camp ground, were away from cell phone towers, and relaxing was our only agenda. (By the way if you are ever in Crouch, Idaho try the coffee shop in the antique store. Best coffee in Crouch!)
My boys loved every minute of our camping trip; eating s’mores by the camp fire at night, wading and swimming in the river, catching rainbow trout from deep cool river pools, soaking in pools of hot water fed by an underground spring that came out of the side of a mountain and cascaded down into the pools of rock and sand, riding bikes, reading books by the fire, eating camping food, and just simply being together as a family.
Read More“Courage to run” may not sound too much like a topic that would have much to do with the spiritual, or with spiritual development and discipleship. After all, most folks I talk with think that running is somewhat crazy, and that runners must be a little nuts. I’ve heard folks say how we are simply not made for running. Our bodies aren’t designed for it. They seek to support this with the misinformed and incorrect assertion that running “destroys the knees.” I’ve even had some folks quote the apostle Paul’s words to his young protégée, Timothy, as a reason for why running (physical training) is spiritually superfluous and unnecessary: “Train yourself in godliness, for, while physical training is of some value, godliness is valuable in every way, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come” (1 Timothy 4.8). And while it is hard to argue against Paul, I do not think it is as binary, as cut and dry, as choosing one over the other. After all, Paul spent hours upon hours and days upon days walking great distances across the Roman Empire. Physical training, it seems, was very much part of his everyday life. As a matter of fact, one might even imagine that it was during these long solitary treks that Paul wrestled with and hammered out much of his theology. They were times of prayer and deep spirituality. It also seems to me that in our day, where we’ve become increasingly sedentary, we are damaging more than just our bodies—our hearts and our arteries, spikes in blood-pressure and blood-sugar—we just might be damaging ourselves spiritually as well.
So that brings us back to running. And not just running, but specifically the courage to run. You might wonder just what sort of courage does it really take to run?
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