Runners

Maybe it starts with just a step or maybe it starts with a casual jog.

Steps and jogging with an occasional sprint; that’s how I remember it. The strides of my journey and yours are at times filled with confusion and brokenness; amazement and wonder. We pause and reflect and still we walk sometimes forward and occasionally we back peddle so fast that we lose our balance and fall. I’ve fallen and I’ve been broken. I’ve asked a lot of questions and I’ve spent some time running.

In all my questioning and running, my steps still kept being incrementally tilted and turned, slightly, a little bit at a time, till my pace broke and to my amazement I found myself in Him.

“If I knew then, what I know now”…how’s that for a well worn phrase?

The thing is, I didn’t know. I didn’t know the extent to which my Father loved me. I couldn’t grasp the worth of my soul. I didn’t know that the longing to belong, to feel valued, the longing for authentic relationships…these things I didn’t know but in my running, my steps found their way as the Father turned them toward Himself. A little at a time. Eventually. Certainly.

I wish it wasn’t a process. I wish that we would just turn around and come home.

But it is a process.

It is a lesson to be learned.

It is a faith strengthened.

It is restoration and it is redemption.

Nothing is wasted. Nothing in the economy of the Father. But still we pray for the runners in our lives; that in their running they would find themselves taking steps. Steps toward wholeness, grace and mercy.

Rhonda Schrock, blogger and columnist for the Goshen News says it so well and you can read more of her writing by following her link under “other blogs”.

Here’s what she has to say on the subject.

I’d been thinking as I rode along in the **BMV, favorite CD poked in, about those we love who are running away.  Thinking how there’s no one here, nobody at all, who doesn’t know someone who’s runnin’.

You don’t get to live down here and dodge that bullet.  The world’s too big and folks are just so different that it never works that way.  Everyone – everyone – knows a runner, loves a runner, or was a runner, and in all of that, there’s a lot of hurtin’ that happens, and it can nearly take a person out if you don’t know how to look at it.

Everyone has a story, see, and you can’t usually tell on the face of it what a person’s carryin’.  Maybe that’s why Jesus said, “I look past the outside right on down into the heart,” and, “Don’t judge the other fellow,” and stuff like that, things this girl needs to listen to more, and she’s tryin’.  But that’s another post for another day.

Anyway.  Back to this thing of runners and those who love them.  What if (this is what He whispered to me plain the other day)…

What if those who are running away – running from us, running from Him – are actually running right to Him, even if they don’t know it yet?  What if that?

What if this all-knowing, all-wise, everywhere-present Father we love, you and I, is just that big that He can guide the wildest runner’s steps and lead them straight to Him?  Even when they’re running in what looks like the absolute, opposite direction from Him and us?  What if that?

You can see how much peace this spoke to my own heart, can’t you, as I thought of the precious runners I love?  Can you see, you who pray and weep and intercede over your own beloved runners, the peace He means for you?

He really is that big.  He really is that wise.  He really is that loving to guide a runner’s steps straight back to Him.  He can, and He will.

Praying for you today, dear friend, and your runner.

**BMV – Blue Mommy Van