Lessons from This Morning's Run

This morning’s run started in a driveway. Not the normal driveway. A driveway in the heart of Mark Twain National Forest nestled in the Ozark mountains. Highway DD in southern Missouri is one of my favorite places to run.

Solitude

The best thinking has been done in solitude. The worst has been done in turmoil. -Thomas A. Edison 

No headphones allowed on this run. The tight, curvy, and hilly highway isn’t well travelled, but the runner has to hear the traffic. Just as well. The sounds of the birds and the animals are delightful. The sounds of silence even more. I dreamt, prayed, and thought about how to be a better me. Kierkegaard wrote: “A great man is one that can develop convictions in solitude and carry them out in a crowd.” I’m at least part of the way there. 

Suffering

Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars. –Kahlil Gibran 

The hills on this road are relentless. Steep and long. The first climb lasts the better part of two miles. My intentions were to get up at 6:00. Yesterday’s eight hours of driving between Branson and Little Rock with ninety minutes of speaking sandwiched between wore me out. I woke up at 8:30. By the time I started at 9:30 the temperature was well in the 80s. The sun was as oppressive as the inclines and declines. I was suffering the entire run—save the first few minutes near the lakeshore. My suffering was optional. The cancer patient, the person who has had a relationship end, and those who battle depression—their suffering isn’t optional. One of the coolest things in life is seeing people emerge from devastation and suffering as recovering and stronger. God does such things every day. 

Sanctity

Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You. -Dr. Seuss 

About eight miles into the run I knew my breath would be taken away. Not by a view of the lake or a deer. By a makeshift gravesite. I’ve seen it many times. He was only seventeen. Way too young. Dreams disappeared that night. Death makes us think about life. Even though I knew it was coming, I became a little more grateful for mine. 

Solidarity

Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You too? I thought I was the only one.” –C.S. Lewis 

The hills and the heat were winning. At nine miles I saw an oasis. A sprinkler. The woman was gardening. I asked her if she minded if I borrowed her sprinkler. She not only said yes, she took my two empty waters bottles inside and filled them up. We shared a laugh or two as I drank the water. The last mile was downhill. My body was defeated. My mind and soul were refreshed.

The best is yet to come… 

Craig

Suffering : Sufficiency

Listen to the audio of my sermon from this morning on suffering and sufficiency. We should have the video up in a few days.

Here are some highlights.

When we wake up in the morning, we choose our attitude. The way we see the world shapes our lives.

Both the pessimist and the optimist know – we live in a complex and complicated world. Bad things and good things happen.

The world is full of pain. The world is also full of people conquering their pain. Short-term pain in life is inevitable. Long-term suffering in life is optional.

Sometimes there is a reason for suffering and sometimes there is no reason for suffering.

We want to believe the world makes senses and that a logical cause and effect exists for everything that happens. But life doesn’t work that way. If you don’t believe me, read the newspaper. 

Sin happens.

Floods happen.

Death happens.

Disease happens.

Relational dysfunction happens.

Economic recession happens.

Hurt happens.

Depression happens.

Despair happens.

Sometimes there is a reason for suffering and sometimes there is no reason for suffering.

Our pain can be because of our poor choices.

Our pain can be because of the poor choices of others.

Our pain can happen for absolutely no reason at all.

God is not the cause of our pain.

God wants to be present with us in our pain.

Some things…only God can do. 

2 Corinthians 12:7-9

Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

The thing that God can do that no other can do is give God’s grace.

Paul experienced pain. Most likely it was headaches or epilepsy. 

The vine clings to the oak during the fiercest of storms. Although the violence of nature may uproot the oak, twining tendrils still cling to it. If the vine is on the side opposite the wind, the great oak is its protection; if it is on the exposed side, the tempest only presses it closer to the trunk. In some of the storms of life, God intervenes and shelters us; while in others He allows us to be exposed, so that we will be pressed more closely to Him and allow God to do what only God can do – give us his grace.

Suffering gets our attention. It forces us to look to God.

Suffering also forces us to look within.

Our response to pain and adversity will simultaneously reveal our current character and develop our future character. 

God can only help those who stop hurting themselves.

As I look back on my life, the greatest lessons have not been learned through success, but through suffering.

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.


Greatness is born out of difficulty


Matthew 5:4-5


Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.


Most of the Psalms were born in difficulty. 


Most of the Epistles were written in prisons. 


Florence Nightingale, too ill to move from her bed, reorganized the hospitals of England. 


Semiparalyzed, Pasteur was tireless in his attack on disease.


In 1962, a research study of 413 "famous and exceptionally gifted people" called Cradles of Eminence. The researchers spent years attempting to understand what produced such greatness, what common thread might run through all of these outstanding people's lives. Surprisingly, the most outstanding fact was that virtually all of them, 392, had to overcome very difficult obstacles in order to become who they were.


A clay pot sitting in the sun will always be a clay pot. It has to go through the white heat of the furnace to become porcelain.


Saying "yes" to the possibility of love is saying "yes" to the possibility of suffering. Attempting to avoid suffering is also avoiding love. Avoiding love is the cruelest form of suffering that exists.

Why Have You Forsaken Me? - Video

Here is my sermon from March 20th. As Jesus was dying on the cross--the burdens he carried were too heavy, the anguish was too deep, the abandonment was too present, and the agony was too painful. At no moment in his life was Jesus as fully human as when he spoke these words. He took the journey many of us have taken and all of us will take at one time or another: alone, puzzled, hurt, injured, empty, heart-broken.


I shared about how to deal with the tough times of life: how brokenness can become wholeness, how abandonment can become community, and how death can become resurrection.

Why Have You Forsaken Me?

Here is the audio and notes from this morning's sermon. The video will be up later in the week. Listen here.

Matthew 27:37-43

37 A sign was fastened to the cross above Jesus’ head, announcing the charge against him. It read: “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.” 38 Two revolutionaries were crucified with him, one on his right and one on his left. 39 The people passing by shouted abuse, shaking their heads in mockery. 40 “Look at you now!” they yelled at him. “You said you were going to destroy the Temple and rebuild it in three days. Well then, if you are the Son of God, save yourself and come down from the cross!” 41 The leading priests, the teachers of religious law, and the elders also mocked Jesus. 42 “He saved others,” they scoffed, “but he can’t save himself! So he is the King of Israel, is he? Let him come down from the cross right now, and we will believe in him! 43 He trusted God, so let God rescue him now if he wants him! For he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’”

Trusts – peitho – to convince, to rely on with inward certainty, have full confidence, or complete trust.

• Easy to trust in the light.
• Not so easy to trust in the dark.

Since the beginning, our trust has been tested.

Matthew 27:45-46

45 At noon, darkness fell across the whole land until three o’clock. 46 At about three o’clock, Jesus called out with a loud voice (screaming in Greek), “Eli, Eli, llama saba cha ne?” which means “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”

Jesus asks the question that at one time – all of us will ask - why have You left me?

1 Corinthians 13:12

12 Now we see things imperfectly as in a cloudy mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.

We can see God in one of two ways...

NOWHERE

No where
Now here – even though I don’t understand

• If you are seeking complete understanding of everything that happens in life – you are going to be disappointed.
• If you are seeking God’s presence – you are going to be comforted.

Isaiah 55:8-9

8 “My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord.
“And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.
9 For just as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so my ways are higher than your ways
and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.

We only see part of the story.

• God is good
• God is for me
• God is with me

God is good
Only God is truly good. –Mark 10:18

God is for me
If God is for us, who can ever be against us? –Romans 8:31

God is with us
I will never fail you. I will never abandon you. -Hebrews 13:5

Proverbs 3:5-6

5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart;
do not depend on your own understanding.
6 Seek his will in all you do,
and he will show you which path to take

Seek - yoda - To Know

Know God

Why is replaced by what

2 Corinthians 5:21

For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.

Why is replaced by who

God comforts us and restores us

Comfort and Alffliction

John 9

We all experience pain in life like the man in verses 1 to 7. When we suffer try not to get caught up on questions like, “Why did this happen?” Instead ask God for His strength and the help of others to deal with the pain. Think about ways God can be glorified (verse 4) through your sufferings.

• What is your reaction to suffering? Do you turn to God?
• Has God been glorified through your suffering? How?

In verses 35 to 41, Jesus discusses spiritual humility. Jesus notes he can spiritually heal people who know they are sinners. He also says he come to challenge those persons who think they have earned God's love and grace. (verses 39 to 41) A common non-biblical phrase for this: Jesus has come to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable.

Pray that God uses uses you today to comfort somebody who needs to be comforted and to challenge somebody who needs to be challenged.