Running on

It has been a week full up to the brim and overflowing with far more than I can fully comprehend and process.

Yet I’m slowly learning that these are the best of times, when I cannot hide the glaring facts of my own smallness, my own weakness, my own insufficiency.

It’s been a time to laugh with friends, to delight in family close by; a time to sit still and drink up—a fountainhead of deep truths, the richness of our faith.

It’s been a time to run through halls in search, a time to hold quiet conversations with a wise old gentleman; a time to catch up with friends from years ago; a time to hold a napping baby, then joke that she was mine and half wish.

It’s been a time to write pages upon pages of notes and a time to hold still with the wonder of it all.

It’s been a time to get lost for an hour in Orlando with the bro, and a time to sit at conference with a dozen friends from school.

It’s been a time to pray, to grow, to stretch; a time to weep over my own sin, to weep in awe, to weep at grace; a time to hunger, and to be filled; a time to run to the well with thousands of fellow pilgrims and to be sated—rewarded richly beyond all our deserving.

It has been a time of finding myself undone, yet redeemed, and inexorably being made new again through thick and thin, by His own redeeming love set on me from all eternity past.

Yes, this was a rich week indeed. There is nowhere I would rather have been than here with these people, amidst this sea of glorious truth, looking out toward the horizon of our hope and finding rest and strength for the race ahead.

We go out into the world with the call of the King ringing in our ears, to follow the pattern of Christ, our head, obeying wholeheartedly the will of our Father and taking up our crosses daily. But after all, as Tim Kissee said, “Gospel risk-taking is not driven by courage, it is driven by confidence in the gospel.”

The days ahead hold risks for us all, for this is a strange, broken world filled with countless hurting and needy people. We have the hope for which hundreds cry out daily. Let us run with the reality of the cross at our backs and our homeland ahead, for then we cannot fail to lay up treasures in that place where no moth or rust can destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.

“He gives His disciples difficult tasks, and He doesn’t promise that they will be successful—He only promises to be with them. But He does promise that He will be successful.”

–      Tim Kissee