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| ps from ps… “Each starting line doesn’t hold a guarantee, but instead a potential” – Coach on this morning’s run Today, I am grateful for every terrible run I have! (Whoa, Steve, get it together. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. We’re looking for upbeat here. Got it? Carry on.) Today, I am grateful for the arguments and struggles I have with my wife! (Hang on dude. That’s the exact opposite of what I was talking about. Focus!!) Today, I am grateful for financial problems I’ve encountered! (Stephen!! – now you know I’m being serious because only your mom and your 4th grade math teacher called you that. Have you been drinking? It’s only 9:20am and there’s no Bills game so it can’t be that. What is with you???) Today, I am grateful for the hard stuff. The starting lines that took me on the runs I didn’t expect, didn’t like and maybe struggled and suffered. Today, on this Thanksgiving Eve, I’m grateful for the hard stuff. So often we sit around our Thanksgiving tables and share the happy-happy-joy-joy stuff. And that’s good, it really is. Maybe this year is will happen on Zoom Thanksgiving Tables instead? Celebrate those things. They are good for sure. But this morning, I was reflecting on the upcoming text from Mark 13. Pastor Jeremiah shares a message on a text that sounds downright scary with the sun and moon darkened and clouds of thunder. Yikes! And yet we are supposed to be ushering in Advent. Sweet gentle happy-happy-joy-joy Advent that ushers in even sweeter Christmas! But today I’m grateful for this text. Because underneath the “sci-fi” sounding images is a returning God to complete what was started – “a revolution of love,” Pastor Jeremiah will call it. A revolution of love. The same love God has been bringing again and again from the start of it all. And yet it’s sometimes not an easy path to experience that love. To feel it. To trust it. And yet it’s coming. Again. And more. Every starting line doesn’t hold a guarantee, but instead a potential. Some of the runs we go on will be hard. Some of the arguments will be rough. Some of the pandemics will be tradition changing and even life taking. Some of the health changes will be challenging. But on each of these “runs” we have the potential to move through them and reflect on them with a faith in God and God of faith that isn’t just about the happy-happy-joy-joy, but instead about the potential. Our potential. And God’s potential to love us through it. Through the struggles. Through the financial issues. Through the relationship challenges. Through, yes, even death itself. So today, I’m grateful. For the hard moments. The hard runs. That reminded me I made. I got through it. That God was with me. That God sometimes pushed me through, directed my ways and even at times carried me. May this Thanksgiving, a different one for sure, be filled with gratitude. For the good. For the hard. And for God’s presence on, in and throughout every part of it. (Ah. I got now. I see where you’re going. Carry on.) Lord, thanks for this run! Amen Still in One Peace, ps |
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