Moments

With endurance sports comes all kinds of aches and pains and sore muscles.  Sometimes, you just have to try to do something for them to relieve the pain and make it through.    One way I have found is to touch it where it hurts and bear down a bit.  Then, hold on and many times the pain diminishes.  Sometimes it goes away entirely. Our lives get all kinds of aches and pains and sore spots.  Sometimes every move seems painful; so painful, if fact, that we wonder if we can go on.  And to do so, like in endurance sports, we have to take just that next painful step, then another.  In the painful parts of life, I know I must keep moving forward, asking God all the while, "touch me where it hurts, Lord."  The pain often doesn't always go completely away.  The journey is yet still long.  But sometimes there is a kind of healing in just knowing that God has touched me. God cares.  And, I can have hope and purpose in the struggle knowing His touch is the healing touch of the Mas

And I want to do an ironman, to  put 140 + miles in one day on this leg?  Crazy. Seriously, it is hit or miss if I can make it to the bathroom when I first get out of bed.  The left leg often won't hold me up at first.  There has been a fall into my trainer bike in the middle of the night and many unsteady, painful times getting out of bed.    Really?  Can this be something God wants me do?  How can this be His purpose for me?  What is the benefit?   Most of the purpose, suffering, and training are done without notice of anyone: who can benefit except the orthopedic surgeon eventually?    Face it.  You're fat, you're old, your uninteresting, and no one cares what you are doing with this or what you have to say through it.   Who is going to be impressed for the Glory of God by  an old sack of bones doing something insane?  It seems more like senility verification.  So what's the sense in the suffering?  Why do this anymore?  Is it over? Age has beat me down to some

Scripture says, "For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day." Outward abilities have never been present and time lessens them even more. Could it be that I am a little old for this? I don't know. Is the way it is supposed to go down when one reaches this time in life? However, if I am to be pulled down, and if I am to obey the "suppose to" as prescribed for my age by conventional wisdom, then what I am I going do with this fire that still burns inside? What am I going to do with the fire God put there, the fire that He seems to fan to flame higher every time I consider following "supposed to" off into the night. In the presence of the flame God gave me, I must "faint not" and wait upon, depend upon the renewal that God gives. " And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice. And it was so, when El

Times I feel His presence so intently, so intimately, that it is like He is in the room alongside me or looking over my shoulder. Be still and know that I am God." Be still to know God is with me. The way to God seem one of stillness; stillness of the world within us like when Jesus calmed the storm, still the troubled waters of our minds and clear the lens to see God, to experience God more clearly and more dearly; Be Still. "Be still and know that I am God : -----" Psalm 46:10 Time races on; life flurries by like snowflakes in the wind, but God doesn't . His stillness spans the ages; the same yesterday, today, and forever. Only we change for better or for worse.  We say we want  to be closer but in the noise of our hurried pursuit, we work toward being  farther away. We work against ourselves toward the empty promises of this temporal life and away from communion, and relationship with God.  Be still.  Be still and close the gap between ourselves and G

I Peter 8:15 Hope We are recognized by our hope. We have hope in a hopeless world. And the world’s wonders, “how can that be?” Are you insane? Haven’t you heard the news? Only a fool would have hope in today’s world. But today’s world is not different than yesterday’s world. There were no “good old days.” For all have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God – even those from the “good old days.” In our time and in the times before, there is, and has not been any hope in this world aside from Jesus Christ. A phrase from a song say, “my only Hope, God’s only Son. I do believe----"

Looking through all my records here on my computer this afternoon. In a moment of enlightened awareness, it came to me: I have been so blessed. These records and writings of my experiences assimilate into a sense of gratitude: What a great life I have had! I told my wife of my realization, of my gratitude of the wonderful things I have had opportunity for. I thanked her for being a big part of my access into a life will lived. But, I know; keenly aware, that God has been in and through it all. Blessed by God to a life I am grateful for and expectation and hope for the one He has yet to reveal. I would imagine I will be even more grateful and grateful to Jesus for what He did that I might have that life and have it abundantly.

This time of the year the violets push through the leaves of the forest floor and send forth a small, beautiful, fragile-looking flower as a herald to the certainty of spring. My mother loved violets. This time of the year she would like to walk the woods and trails seeking them out to become excited when she found one of the little blue flowers. When she got where she could not walk so well, I took her violet-looking and she loved it still in a childlike way. I was never sure why she loved the violets so much – I should have asked – but I can guess. For one, they are some of the first flowers of spring, blooming in the face of cold weather yet to come. Another is that violets push their way through leaves and debris on the forest flower to forge a place in the sun; a place to bloom at last in defiance of winter, and its surroundings. It seems it is determined to share its beauty in spite of it all. Mother was like that. Mother was like that violet. In spite of all th