Challenge: Race Prep

I'm laughing at myself for using this example, because I am so not an athlete. But per normal with this blog, any story I tell, I tell to make a point. 

I was on the track team when I was in the 10th grade. I was without doubt the slowest person on the track team, and I didn't even complete the entire season, ostensibly because I developed painful shin splints. In reality, my best friend was on the track team, so I joined. But unlike me, she was really good at it. Because of my "shin splints..." I decided to sit the rest of the season out. 

When I first started, however, my coach tried to get me shaped up for running the 800m (2 laps around the track). I was a weird mixture of no speed (so the 400m was out) and no endurance (so I couldn't do the 1600m, either), and I don't think he knew what to do with me. He plugged me right into the middle.

When I'd finish a practice run, I'd lean my hands on my knees, gulp in air, and try my best to stay alive for just a few more beats of my heart. My coach told me: "Rest, hydrate, and when you're ready, eat."

Fast forward a few years. I was at Rosedale Bible College during the school year 2000-2001. I remember, vividly, at one point during the year (early winter, I believe), I was completely overwhelmed. I don't mean a temporary feeling of Boy, I'm stressed. I was ready to quit. Go home. Forget I'd ever thought I could do this school thing.

I don't remember all the things I was overwhelmed by -- I was involved in several leadership positions, leading worship, participating in some music groups, maintaining a work-study job, and studying for my classes. 

Here's the thing: Every last one of the things I was doing, every last one of the things I was overwhelmed by... were good things. They were things that encouraged others, advanced the kingdom of God, helped to lead people to Him, pointed to the Lord as King of kings...

But I was weighed down, so, so deeply weighed down. All of those things had culminated into a draining, heavy mass that sat in my soul like a boulder. I remember trying to study on the quad one day, wrestling with feeling absolutely drained of life, vitality, and hope in my relationship with the Lord.

I felt like Martha. "Martha, Martha," Jesus said, "you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken from her" (Luke 10:41). 

See, Mary was Martha's sister, a member of the same household, a carrier of the same hostess duties that drove Martha. But when I read this the other day, the word chosen stood out to me.

Mary chose to sit at Jesus' feet and listen to him teach. She chose to push aside her responsibilities for a little while and made an active decision to step out from beneath the pressure... to rest, and to listen.

I have tended to read over this passage and think: "Poor Martha, picking up the slack where Mary left her high and dry."

But the thing is, Mary didn't move into the space at Jesus' feet and build a house. There was fellowship, there were guests... but then the night would come along with sleep and rest for the members of the household, then the following day would arrive, and with it, more work and more responsibility.

But at that point, right there, Mary chose to put it all aside, and sit... rest... at Jesus' feet. 

This morning, the Lord led me out of Romans. Just for a minute, Holy Spirit said. You need to rest.

Turns out, He's right. I went to my old favorite, one of the most well-known chapters in the Scriptures: Psalm 23. "The Lord is my Shepherd. I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside quiet waters; He restores my soul."

He's the Soul Restorer.

If there were ever a need for soul restoration in the hearts of tired, aching people, it's today. Sure, we've gone through harder times in the past, but "we know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time." The whole creation will not stop groaning until the Soul Restorer restores us completely when He comes again. Until He does, this world continues on under the sin-effect. The consequences of sin in our world.

At Rosedale, when all those things piled on my shoulders and weighed me down so heavily that I was ready to quit every kingdom responsibility I carried, I heard Him say: "Come with Me by yourself to a quiet place and get some rest" (Mark 6:33).

So I went to the appropriate people and got permission to go the Hocking Hills State Park in Ohio, which was about an hour and a half drive from Rosedale. When I got there, I parked and spent most of the day meandering the trails by the river. Since it was early winter, not many people were there, and I found a place on a hillside near the river and spent a long while watching the gently moving water, listening to its enthusiastic laughter, and I soul-rested.

A soul-rest is very similar to a physical rest. After my 800m race, my lungs were pumping, my heart was beating at accelerated tempo, and my metabolic needs were on high alert. Some of y'all are way more in shape than I will ever be, and you'll need more than 800m to get to the same state, but the fact remains, your body requires three essential things to be able to return to normal activity: rest, hydration, and food. 

"Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28). Rest.

"The water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life" (John 4:14). Hydration.

"I am the Bread of life. Whoever comes to Me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in Me will never be thirsty" (John 6:35). Food.

Mary chose to sit at Jesus' feet in the middle of the hustle and bustle of preparation, in the middle of friends. But what if the circumstances aren't so favorable?

What if you're in a country where you're forced to flee from your home because of your faith, where if you stay, you face almost certain death? What if you're in a country that has been hit... yet again... with a destructive earthquake? What if you're in a state that is rocked by wildfires and more wildfires and more wildfires? What if you're in a world that is riddled not only with disease, but with insults, shaming, blame, censure, and hatred over how you navigate said disease? What if you are seeing the world seemingly come apart at the seams, and you're holding the weight of it in your heart and on your shoulders?

In Psalm 23, the Soul-Restorer doesn't set the table for you in the presence of friends or comforters or advocates or counselors or family. The Soul-Restorer sets that table in the presence of enemies.

We can be surrounded by the worst, but still know that we are a part of the best story. We can be dog-tired of lifting our sword one. more. time., but we know that the Soul-Restorer is carrying us through the chaos and danger of battle.

"Come with Me to a quiet place and get some rest."

It doesn't have to be a permanent rest, y'all. I'm not advocating poisoned Kool-Aid. But here's a challenge (I'm challenging myself, too). 

Lent has always been a little intimidating for me, because it's forty days of fasting from something important to me. It feels overwhelming, and I've failed my ambitions for it quite a few times. But let's try something bite-sized. 

Take a day... just one twenty-four hour period... where you put down your phones, you let the news headlines scroll on by without you (believe me, the headlines don't need you, shocking as that is). Grab your Bible, maybe even a real, physical, page-turning Bible so you're not tempted to exit out of your Bible app and head to the news or to social media...

And spend that day with your Soul-Restorer. Spend that day talking to Him. Spend that day expecting Him to talk back, because He will. Show Him your battle wounds. Let Him heal them. Show Him your burdened heart. Let Him take it away. 

Spend that day... relating. Just simple relationship. Don't even participate in spiritual battle that day; there are other days for that. Let it be a day of rest. Restoration. 

And then come back to the race with your heart-rate back in tempo, your lungs refreshed, and your metabolic needs stabilized and filled. 

You can't win a race if you're limping. You need to get ready to run.