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Come Back

Berry —  January 3, 2013 — 1 Comment

When they heard God strolling in the garden in the evening breeze, the Man and his Wife hid from God.

 God called to the Man: “Where are you?”

The Man said, “I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid.” (from Genesis 3:8-10, MSG)

Every January 1, the beginning of my annual journey through the Daily Chronological Bible, I read the grandest and boldest Fresh Start Story of all, the opening narrative of Genesis. And my favorite story comes from Genesis 3.

The most famous part of this story is the tragic account of Adam and Eve choosing to sin by eating the forbidden fruit. Why did they do it? The serpent told them, in effect, “God is holding out on you; there is a life you can have that’s bigger than the life God has for you.” So they ate, expecting to find a bigger, smarter, wiser, and more fulfilled life.

We’ve all heard that lie, haven’t we? The voice in our head says, “Pursue this even though God says it is wrong; your life will be so much more exciting if you do.”

But Adam and Eve discovered that the wisdom they expected actually showed them their own sin and nakedness, and for the first time in their life, they hid from God. They were afraid of God.

That fear, the first they’d ever felt, must have rocked their world as much as the pain from their sin.

Well, my favorite part of the story is what happened next. The text says that God went walking in the garden, looking for them. God called out, “Where are you?”

Of course, he knew exactly where they were. This wasn’t a game of hide and seek, or a geography quiz.

What God was asking was this: “Where is your heart?”

He didn’t go searching to capture them and punish them. He came to bring them back. God wanted his people to come back. He didn’t want them to be afraid of him.

The best part of the story happened when Adam answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”

It was a remarkable confession – that he was afraid of God, and afraid of his own exposure.

But what is even more significant is that Adam answered at all. He could have slunk deeper into the trees and tried to hide further.

He didn’t do that, though. He came back. Adam’s best move in the entire book of Genesis was that he came back. Even in his nakedness and exposure and fear and shame and embarrassment and sin, he came back. His desire to experience God was greater than his fear and shame. He couldn’t stay away. He came back.

It’s a sad truth that Adam sinned against God. He made a huge mistake that changed the entire course of mankind, and he deserves to take the hit for that. But what made him human, his best move ever, was this, he came back.

Just like Simon Peter, who came back to Jesus instead of running away, after committing the most embarrassing sin imaginable. Peter’s need for grace and acceptance and healing from Jesus was greater than his shame and embarrassment.

Just like David, “A man after God’s own heart.” The Bible doesn’t give David that label because of his perfect life, which wasn’t perfect, but because he always came back. After every failure, David ran back to God.

They came back because their need for healing and restoration was greater than their shame and embarrassment. And because they came back, we can come back. We don’t have to slink deeper into the wilderness to hide. We can come back.

The story of Adam took another bad turn when Adam blamed his sin on Eve, who blamed her sin on the serpent. That’s often the way with fresh starts. We begin doing the right thing but stumble almost immediately.

Fresh starts are real, but so is failure. Yet, even when we fail, we can turn around and come back again.

Maybe we set great New Year’s goals on January 1, but by January 3, we wonder what happened. We’ve already stumbled. How could we fail so quickly?

How many times each day will we have to decide whether to go deeper into the trees or step into the light, whether to run away and hide or come back to God?

But here’s the good news. Setbacks don’t have to define our lives. Like Adam, Peter, and David, we have a choice. We can come back to God. He is searching for us, even now.

 

“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

To learn about Berry’s books, “Running With God,” go to www.runningwithgodonline.com , or “Retreating With God,” go to www.retreatingwithgod.com ,… Follow Berry on Twitter at @berrysimpson or on Facebook … Contact Berry directly: berry@stonefoot.org … To post a comment or subscribe to this free journal: www.journalentries.org

 

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What Is Your Quest?

Berry —  December 28, 2012 — Leave a comment

His personal trainer rendered him speechless by asking, “Are you sure you don’t want to do more?”

I was reading To Be a Runner, by Martin Dugard, one of the best running books I’ve ever read. A longtime runner and coach, Dugard had reluctantly recruited a personal trainer to help him break out of a long, sedentary spell of sloth and weight gain. In the opening interview at the gym, The House of Pain, his trainer, Terry, asked, “What are your goals?”

Surprisingly, for a trained athlete, he didn’t have a goal. He wasn’t sure what he wanted from the workouts other than to be better.

But Dugard also had a philosophical problem with the word “goal.” He preferred “quests.” To him, goals sounded pedestrian, but quests were quixotic.

The distinction between goal and quest was not so obvious to me; however, I could see the difference between setting a goal to lose twenty pounds and being on a quest to hike the Appalachian Trail. Or the difference between setting a goal to read twenty books versus a quest to write twenty books.

Goals seem to be about what you do (or what you want to do), while quests seem to be about who you are (or hope to be).

Therefore, a quest should be bigger than life, something we cannot accomplish on our own. A quest should be an epic adventure.

(Of course, to be honest, I cannot use the word “quest” without hearing Monty Python’s Search for the Holy Grail in my head. That’s probably why I seldom use that specific word, even though I talk about the concept of epic adventures often.)

Martin Dugard told a story about running up a long set of steps to the top of an Italian mountain, near the shores of Lake Garda, to see the ruins of a fifth-century castle. The route got progressively steeper the further he ran, but he was not tempted to turn back. He didn’t know what he would find at the top, or whether it would be worth the struggle, but he had wasted too many weeks without running so he kept moving up.

Dugard’s life aphorism is, “Keep Pushing – Always.” He described  it as a reminder “not to settle but to dream, to live, to sing, to let go of the past and fulfill your destiny. Sometimes a single run can make your whole life come full circle – or maybe just make sense of the things you never understood. That run up an Italian mountain banished my fear of settling.”

His last phrase, “banished my fear of settling,” caught my attention because of my own tendency to settle. I’ve taught myself to seek adventure, movement, and journey, but my natural, organic, inclination is to seek equilibrium, to find a place to settle whenever possible. I’ve learned to schedule runs, hikes, and rides – hard ones and long ones – to keep this tendency at bay.

I’ve also fought my tendency to settle by becoming a goal setter. I don’t claim to be a great goal achiever, but I try to set a sufficient number of goals so if I only achieve a few of them I still make real changes and feel good about myself. And some of those goals have now become habits so deeply engrained I no longer have to think about accomplishing them – they’ve become part of my daily life.

And so, as a goal-setter, I hate to waste a January. If you’ve been in any of my classes, you’ve heard me preaching the value of New Year’s Resolutions (except that I would rather say “goals” than “resolutions” since resolutions are usually about stopping, while goals are about doing. I think most people would rather do than stop. (Maybe I should consider New Year’s Quests!))

Back to the book – my favorite part of Martin Dugard’s story comes at the end. After several rounds of give-and-take between Terry-the-personal-trainer asking about goals, Martin giving wimpy noncommittal answers, and Terry making fun of him, Dugard finally said, “I want to look better in my author picture.” He hoped this would end the questioning.

Terry asked, “Are you sure you don’t want to do more?”

What a great question for January 2013. Are you sure you don’t want to do more?

Not necessarily more things, or more goals, but taking a few goals deeper into the quest?

Do you have a goal to lose ten pounds? Why not do more, and commit to running your first 5K? Or half-marathon?

Maybe you have a goal to start cycling? Why not turn it into a quest to complete a long-distance group ride?

One goal I want to start is learning to draw. My quest is to be a better writer, and I think drawing will help me to see better.

How about you? What are your goals, or even better, what are your quests, to begin 2013?

 

“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

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Transitions

Berry —  December 21, 2012 — Leave a comment

“One thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me” (Philippians 3:13-14, NIV)

Tuesday morning last week, I read this note in the margin of my Daily Bible: “December 11, 2007 – my last City Council meeting.”

I wrote that in my Bible so I wouldn’t forget; it was a big day in my life. I had served on the Midland City Council for twelve years.

I don’t remember much about that last meeting except that it felt right – like it was time to move on. I had no real regrets about leaving, yet I would’ve stayed and enjoyed it had I won the election.

The peace of that particular day surprised me, since I’d spent years wondering what I would do with myself after leaving government. I enjoyed serving on the Council, even the difficult and painful times. I loved making decisions that made Midland better, stronger, and safer for families. I was proud of the work I did to encourage park development, improve quality of life, and turn vacant run-down empty lots into living neighborhoods. I poured a great deal of intellectual and emotional energy into city government, and it occupied a huge portion of my mental capacity for the entire twelve years.

So my biggest questions on December 11, 2007 were, what will I do next, and who will care? Maybe the unspoken question was this: Who will I be after today?

For twelve years I’d wondered how it would end. I expected to be anxious and restless after leaving, until all those government wheels spinning in my head coasted to a stop.

But what really happened was this: nothing. The daily wear-and-tear and problem solving flew away quickly and completely. Instead of being haunted by my own absence, I was free. I forgot about government almost immediately. It faded quickly into something I used to do, long ago and far away, like going to college or being single.

The freedom was a gift from God. He was telling me be cool, it was time to go, press on to the future, and forget what lies behind.

Here’s what happened next.

I found time to write and publish two books. (My third will be out in January 2013.)

I dived deeper into the lives of the men God entrusted to me.

Cyndi and I built a new house – actually, we stood around and watched while Kahler Homes built it – and we love it. We filled it up with people almost immediately and have kept it full ever since.

I don’t know how I could have done any of those if still in government.

What I am trying to say is, while I enjoyed serving all those years, and I am certain I would enjoy it today if I were still there, I am happier in my new life. Happier than I was before, and happier than I expected to be. And the fact the transition was so easy makes it even better. As if God took my hand, led me across the street, and said, “Let’s try some different stuff over here for a while.”

Well – back to my Daily Bible – the next morning, December 12th, I read a story from Acts 24 that reminded me how transitions seldom work out as quickly or cleanly as we want. Most are harder, and most drag on longer that we hope.

The story in Acts was about a time when the Apostle Paul spent two years in prison because the governor was afraid to make a decision. Two years, gone, just like that.

Paul’s situation reminded me of another transition story. In 1994, like many other engineers, I was laid off by my employer of fifteen years. It took two years before I was working again. Two years, in the middle of my career, gone, just like that. Unemployment was frustrating and embarrassing; hard to comprehend God’s purpose.

However, during that time I developed the practice of writing one page every day. The topic wasn’t important as long as I filled the page. I also broke out of my corporate cocoon and dipped into the relational side of the independent oil and gas industry. I made a lot of new friends.

At the time, both of those activities seemed like busy work, stalling until something better came along. But looking back I realize they made my current life and work possible. Who knew?

And to be honest, the period of transition that began in 1994 has never really ended. Instability and uncertainty just became my way of life. I can’t say I am happy about that, but I’ve grown comfortable with it.

So sometimes, the transition doesn’t end right away. Maybe we need more training or conditioning; maybe the circumstances aren’t ready for us; maybe we just need to be grow up a little bit. It’s often hard to know the “why” of God’s timing.

The end of the calendar year means transitions for most of us. This is a great opportunity to move from the past, whether behaviors or beliefs or roadblocks, and into the next phase. It won’t be easy, but transitional moments should never be wasted. Ask God to show you what to leave behind and what to press toward.

And another thing about transitions. We seldom get a peek at what will come next. God doesn’t show the next thing to us until we are ready, and like ten-year-old boys, we are never ready as soon as we think we are.

So press on toward those transitions. They may happen quickly, or may take two years, but you can trust God to have your future in his plan.

 

Questions: Which big transition of your life happened quickly? Which took a long time? What do you see for 2013?

 

“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

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Honoring a simple tradition

Berry —  December 15, 2012 — Leave a comment

Our traditions are like our stories; they illustrate who we are, the kind of people we’ve become, our values and priorities. And behaviors become traditions only one way, through repetition. And that takes intentional action.

So Wednesday, in honor of tradition, I ran twelve laps on the track at Memorial Stadium, starting at 12:12 PM. A tiny handful of runners – two others, to be exact, and one run official to certify the activity and hand out water – joined me to celebrate the numerically symmetrical date December 12, 2012, or 12-12-12. Why? I had to do it. I could not let it pass by.

This tradition began more than 24 years ago when I was running early one morning and realized that Crazy EightsAugust 8, 1988 was coming up and we should do something with it. The running club came up with the Crazy Eights 8K, to be run at 8:00 PM, the evening of 8-8-88. One club member welded some crooked figure-eight trophies and another, Frank, made wooden mounts. We gave the trophies to the 8th place finisher, and 18th, 28th, etc.

Being proud of ourselves, we started planning for the 9-9-99 9K. Eleven years later, we ran at 9:00 PM on the cart path of the new nine holes at Hogan Park Municipal Golf Course, and Chuck, the Parks Director, gave old nine irons to the 9th, 19th, etc., finishers.

The opening decade of the 21st-Century provided more frequent opportunities for similar races. My favorite was the four-mile race on 4-4-4 near Stonegate Fellowship church. Much to everyone’s surprise it was cold and rainy that afternoon, and we Texans had already packed away our winter gear. We all froze in the cold rain.

But the reason that race is my favorite was what happened at the finish line. We saw an experienced marathoner, Andy, racing with a young high-schooler, Derek. Andy pushed Derek the entire four miles, and he made the boy hurt in a fast finishing sprint. As soon as Derek crossed the line he threw up in the street. He then collapsed into the gutter, still retching, cold water rushing past him, carrying the mess away. All the guys working the finish line and those who’d already finished were amazed, impressed, and proud that a young man would give that much of himself in a race. We stood around for several minutes bragging about him until some women ran over to give him love and comfort and help him inside. We men were so moved by his example of courage it never occurred to us to help him. That young man is now a U.S. Marine. Go figure.

After that, we ran every year, 5-5-5, 6-6-6, etc. We even duplicated the original Hogan Park 9K at the golf course by running at 9:00 PM on 9-9-9.

So with 12-12-12 approaching I wanted to finish the series in style. Some traditions are more fluid so that you have days or weeks to observe them. We take leeway with birthdays, holding parties on days when it’s most convenient rather than insisting on the exact day. But the 12-12-12 thing wouldn’t work on any other day. The very reason for the tradition is the symmetry of the date, and running on the 13th or 11th instead of the 12th just doesn’t swing. Unfortunately, the 12th was a Wednesday, and since we had to run at noon or midnight, that was a problem. Neither twelve miles nor twelve kilometers made sense in the middle of the day in the middle of the week.

And not only that, the hustle of the holidays stole our attention, and there was a fire in our church, the race sponsor, and soon, the initiative to put on a race was gone.

Without an official race, I knew I would do something twelvish on my own, but didn’t think anyone would be interested in joining me. Then another of my road-warrior friends, a past president of the running club, Carla, now a letter-carrier in Colorado Springs, Colorado, stirred me into action. I sent out emails and posted on Facebook about running twelve laps at the track at noon on Wednesday, 12-12-12.

I understand that to many people the whole symmetrical date thing sounds more like an obsession than a tradition. I can’t explain why it is important to me, except that it’s fun.

I also understand, or am beginning to understand, or maybe learning, that it was more important for many of my friends to know I observed 12-12-12 than it was for them to actually participate? Why do I know that? I got a lot more feedback from the announcements than participation at the actual event.

That’s OK. I didn’t mind. In a weird sort of way I’ve learned to appreciate the expectations people have of me. It feels tribal.

We often laugh at traditions; especially baby boomers who think we carry the rebellious sixties in our hearts, wondering why we have to do what we’ve always done merely because we’ve always done it. As I’ve gotten older I realize that the fact we’ve always done it is often reason enough to do it again. In a fast-changing world it is even more important to hold on to simple traditions … especially the simplest traditions.

And so, let me be the first to invite you to join me for a two-mile race on Wednesday, February 2, 2022. You have ten years to train, so get started. You’ll have fun. It is a tradition you don’t want to miss.

 

“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

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