There are some things you should probably just give up if you haven’t done them in awhile. A friend of mine who’d smoked for thirty years got such a bad cold he couldn’t enjoy a cigarette. When he realized he hadn’t smoked in two weeks, he decided just to quit, hasn’t smoked since, and is the better for it.
Some days I think running may be one of those things! I started running again recently after almost a decade and I’m wondering how long it will take to get past the sheer hatred. I hate the heat, hate the way I have to stop and walk so I don’t collapse by the side of the road, hate the habit of large birds circle patiently overhead hoping this will be the day I actually do.
Running is waaaay different if you’ve gotten out of the habit, allowed yourself to get out of shape even just a tad. And did I mention our road is sand? And uphill a good bit of the time?
Fortunately, my husband refuses to listen to me whine. “That’s great!” David cheers from his prone position on the couch when I stagger through the door. “You did it in record time!” He’s talking about one of those black vinyl long-play records you get as collector’s items, no doubt, but I appreciate the encouragement. Everyone does better with a cheering section, even in our spiritual journey—that “great cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12) serves a purpose!
Isaiah 40:31 tells us that “they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; and they shall walk and not faint (KJV).” As a teenager, we sang the verse as a chorus at church with a refrain added: “Teach me Lord, teach me Lord, to wait.”
Long ago in my gym days, I enjoyed weight training, but “wait training” is just as important. Training is what we’re on this earth for, incidentally, otherwise God would call us home to heaven as soon as we got saved. Eternity promises to be so awesome, we’re not going to want to waste one moment of it learning lessons we should have learned here.
A family member recently returned from deployment overseas, where a lot of what he did was….wait. I’d like to say we’ve been waiting patiently on certain members of the financial community so that we can sell some property, but it’s been a struggle. At the moment, I’m waiting on various people to receive wisdom/discover a light bulb over their heads/come to their senses /whatever-it-takes so that they come in line with what I want! We wait for a new job, the right guy to ask us to the prom, test results, stimulus checks from the IRS, for the red light to turn already.
And God is, I’m sure, waiting for us to get over ourselves and trust him. Completely. Since he’s God and all, and clearly we are not.
Waiting on God, as Isaiah discovered, isn’t vacant, endless minutes of boring existence, but a living, active, phase of obedience. It’s a time to rest in him, to be built up and prepared inwardly. Through waiting on him, we receive strength so that when he does call us to action, we are equipped and able to run the race that is set before us without getting too tired, to keep walking our Christian walk without fainting away in the heat of adversity and conflict.
The birds don’t circle above us quite as much, either.
Ellen Gillette is a freelance writer and author of Baaad Sheep- When God’s People Let You Down (CarePoint, 2007). Write to her at ellenofgillette1@aol.com. If she’s not too tired from running, she’d enjoy writing back.
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