One night during the holidays I was
watching a college football bowl game on TV, the Las Vegas Bowl, featuring Oregon State
and BYU. It was a game I was interested in only because I was running a bowl
game contest and my own pick to win the game was getting hammered. At the end,
after a decisive win by BYU, I reached for my favorite red felt-tip pen to
grade everyone’s pick sheets, only to discover my pen wasn’t on the library
table where I left it. I looked all over for my pen. I looked in and around my
own small neat stack of projects. I also dug around Cyndi’s piles of papers and
stuff. No pen.

Then Cyndi came into the library to
ask how the game was going (she was entered in the bowl game contest as well,
which was the only reason she cared who won). I said, “Bad. We all got
slammed.” Then I added, “But I can’t find my favorite red pen. Do you see it
anywhere on this table?”

“You took it into the kitchen and
left it on the counter. I put it away in the drawer to keep it safe for you.”

“I’m sure I didn’t put it in the
kitchen. Why would I take my pen in there?” I could tell she was starting to
walk toward the kitchen and plant my pen in the drawer to make her own story
plausible, so I jumped up out of my chair to get there before she did. We ended
up race walking through the house. I tried to bump her off against the
entertainment center but she slipped around me just in time. She did have a
head start, after all.

She pulled out the drawer near the
refrigerator and grabbed my red pen and held it up. I don’t know how she palmed
it into the drawer without my noticing; slight-of-hand tricks have never been
Cyndi’s style.

“Why is my favorite red pen in
there?” I asked.

“You left it in here on the counter.”

“No I didn’t.”

Then I noticed the freshly-baked
sugar cookies piled on the counter and I got distracted. I looked for the
telltale pile of rejected brown-bottomed “family cookies” that would be
acceptable for eating, but I didn’t see them. Cyndi noticed my subtle glance
and offered me a cookie. She said, “I can’t believe you would sneak your pen in
here on the counter just so you could get a cookie.”

“Well, I don’t believe it, either.
I’m pretty sure that isn’t what happened. And besides, I’ve been hinting around
all evening about you sharing your cookies but you just kept ignoring me.”

“So you snuck your pen into the
kitchen?”

“So you smuggled my pen off the
library table and hid it in this drawer?”

Well, I would have kept arguing but
now my mouth was full of delicious freshly-baked sugar cookie and I could no
longer speak clearly. It was a primo cookie, not even from the family pile. I
took my pen from Cyndi and went back to the library to grade my stack of bowl
game pick sheets.

However, once I finished, I left my
pen in the middle of the table, hoping Cyndi might sneak it away again. I heard
she was planning to bake her famous cinnamon roles next and I couldn’t wait.

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

To learn more about Berry’s newest book, “Running
With God:” http://www.runningwithgodonline.com/

Follow Berry on Twitter at @berrysimpson … Contact
Berry directly: berry@stonefoot.org

Story #1: Reading in Genesis about Noah in the ark,
verse 7:16 says “Then the Lord shut him in.” I wrote in the margin of my Bible,
“We talk a lot about God opening and closing doors. Here is a case when God
closed a door as protection … yet, I usually pray for open doors.”

For my entire life as a believer
I’ve heard the phrase, “When God closes a door he opens a window.” The idea is
that if an opportunity goes away God provides another. It is meant to be a
comfort when something we wanted gets closed down. In later years I learned a
Quaker phrase, “Proceed as the way opens,” meaning in our pursuit of God’s life
we seldom get to see very far in advance but we should simply move forward as
opportunities open up. Both of those phrases have proven true for me at
different stages of life.

In Noah’s case God closed the door
to protect Noah and his family. I wonder how often God has closed a door,
slamming it shut, to protect me and my family? How many missed opportunities or
regrets that seemed bad at the time but were actually God’s grace?

Story #2: Genesis 14 tells
the story when Lot and his family was captured
by four warlords. This was after Abram and Lot made their famous split and Lot chose the land that eventually led to this downfall.
They were taken along with other people and possessions from Sodom
and Gomorrah.

When Abram heard that his nephew had
been taken captive he assembled his own men and pursued the warring tribes,
chasing them across the countryside until he soundly defeated them. He
recovered all the goods and people and brought them back home.

As I read this I wondered if being
captured and destined for slavery or death was Lot’s
wake-up call from God. I wondered if God allowed this to happen to Lot to show him he would share in the bad fortunes of the
people he had chosen to live with, and to give him an opportunity to pack up
his stuff and rejoin Abram, which would mean rejoining God? Maybe this was
God’s warning to Lot that life was about to get much worse at Sodom
and Gomorrah
and he should get out now.

But Lot
settled back into his old life. After he was rescued he went home to Sodom and there is no
mention of his presence at the worship service with Melchizedek to honor God
for the victory. Lot was conspicuously absent
from the record. In spite of God’s grace and warning, he learned nothing.

Story #3: Genesis 16
describes the plight of Hagar, servant to Abram and Sarai, who was tossed out
of the family through no fault of her own. Hagar called the place where God
spoke to her “Beer Lahai Roi,” saying, “You are the God who sees me.” What a
comfort to know we are seen, to know we are valued, to know our efforts and
contribution have made a significant impact and have been noticed by those who
matter, to know we are not alone, to know we are not abandoned, to know God
sees us. In ancient religions it was not good to be seen or noticed by god.
Worship was about appeasing god and keeping him satisfied and keeping him
distant. But here is a God who showed himself to Hagar and she was blessed. She
knew she was not alone. Even when pushed out of her family, out of her own
life, and left alone, she knew the one who mattered saw her and noticed her.
Sometimes that’s the grace we need most.

Story #4: Finally, in Genesis
19, angels had to drag Lot and his wife by the hand to save them from
destruction in Sodom.
Even then, Lot tried to bargain with them as
they saved his life. I wonder how many times I have been rescued by God
dragging me by the hand, while I complained the entire time?

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

To learn more about Berry’s newest book, “Running
With God:” http://www.runningwithgodonline.com/

Follow Berry on Twitter at @berrysimpson … Contact
Berry directly: berry@stonefoot.org

I’ve written about this before so it
should come as no surprise: I’m a goal-setter, a list-maker, and a box-checker.
I like to write my goals on paper in a list so I can check them off. When
working with daily goals or weekend projects, I even draw little boxes beside
each item so I have a place to put my checkmark.

I prefer to set goals that I have a
solid chance to achieve, and goals that I can measure. For example, I never set
abstract goals to be a better person or impossible goals to learn Einstein’s
Theory of General Relativity. I wouldn’t know how to begin with Einstein, and I
wouldn’t know if I was successful at becoming a better person.

I also believe in incremental
improvement over a lifetime, so I don’t mind if my goals are small. I know that
small changes today equal big differences tomorrow. As long as I make goals
that are sustainable and repeatable, they’ll add up over time to shape new
habits and new life. That’s my plan.

So, as has been my habit, I have a
list of goals for 2010. They are a subset of my big list of 100 Life Goals,
which, if you are interested, can be found at: http://journalentries.typepad.com/journal-entries/life-goals.html

Send my next book to my editor, and
publish it this year.

Start working on book #3. I already
have a broad idea in my head and I am ready to start working on it.

Run a marathon this spring, and an
ultramarathon next fall. I know this depends on staying healthy and keeping my
knee safe, so it is actually an every-day goal.

Continue my 2009 weight loss plan (I
went from 220 down to 195), moving down to 175 pounds. I don’t know if I can go
that low (I haven’t weighed that since high school), but I would like to try it
to see if it helps my knee. The bit I lost in 2009 helped me do almost
everything better.

Spend time backpacking in Big Bend, the desert flatland in the winter, and the Rim
in the summer.

Read several books by Hemmingway, as
part of my long-term study of great storytellers. I hope, by reading their
stories, I will get better at telling mine.

Build a chin-up bar in the garage
and pursue one of my life goals of doing my age in pull-ups, sit-ups, and
push-ups. The sit-ups and push-ups are hard, but doable. The pull-ups are a
killer, but I have located a plan and I think I can do it.

Play my trombone more often. I took
most of 2009 off because of my extra deacon duties at my church, but those are
now over and I want to reengage. I am afraid if I leave my horn in the case too
long it will stay there forever, and I am not ready for that yet.

Have lunch with at least one of my
guys at least once a week. God has surrounded me with great guys and I need
more one-on-one time with them

Update our wills. Our current wills
were written when both children were very young; it’s high time we caught up to
this stage of our life. This has actually been on my list of goals for a couple
of years now, and I’ve made no progress other than placing the forms on top of
my desk to remind me of what I haven’t done. This is the year to get it done.

Read 60 books on various topics, and
read through the Bible. This is actually a yearly goal for me that never
changes.

Think about the possibility of maybe
beginning to consider learning Spanish. I’m not sure how to go about this, so I
am open to suggestions.

Print at least one family photo
album. This project has been on my list for a couple of years, but I keep
finding more photos in shoe boxes and old albums and in the bottom of desk
drawers and I’ve been afraid to start, thinking there must be even more photos
somewhere. It is time to move on with this.

Do you have a list? Do you have any
goals for 2010? What are they?

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

To learn more about Berry’s newest book, “Running
With God:” http://www.runningwithgodonline.com/

Follow Berry on Twitter at @berrysimpson … Contact
Berry directly: berry@stonefoot.org

Last week I was in the Live Nativity
again at First Baptist Church.
I don’t know when I first started doing this, but I’ve been participating
on-and-off for several years. I think they keep asking me back because I have a
real beard. Through the years I have been a shepherd, a wise man, and even
Joseph. This year, I was a shepherd.

It is the most simple of all drama
assignments. We dress in costume, submit to stage makeup so we’ll look Middle
Eastern, go outside in the cold and stand for an hour without moving or
speaking. I think I am actually too old to be a convincing third-world
shepherd; I expect they were all teenagers or younger. However, after living
outside all day all year, maybe even teenagers looked 50-years-old.

So the best news about being a
shepherd was that I didn’t have to be a wise man. The wise men have to kneel,
and I would never have made it even twenty minutes kneeling. And if I
miraculously survived kneeling, I wouldn’t be able to stand and walk back into
the church afterward. As a shepherd all I had to was stand behind Mary, off her
left shoulder, lean against my staff, and gaze at the baby Jesus. My knees
handled that assignment just fine.

It was cold outside, but I was very
comfortable. Underneath my costume I wore black jeans and a black long-sleeved
T-shirt. (A friend saw me walking into church beforehand, noticed my all-black
outfit, and said, “Merry Christmas.”) I remember doing this in previous years
when piercing cold was the dominate factor of the night. One year was so cold
we stayed outside only 30 minute at a time. But this year was almost balmy.

So we posed nearly motionless for an
hour; the hardest part of the evening was deciding what to think about for so
long. I thought about my own experience as a new father when Byron and Katie
were born, and it occurred to me that if I had been Joseph I would have been
staring at Mary rather than Jesus. I remember being so proud of our new babies,
but even more than that, I was proud of Cyndi. She was wonderful as a brand-new
mother, and I just wanted to hold her close and make her feel safe and guarded
and well-loved. I’ll bet Joseph felt the same way about Mary.

To keep my mind entertained, I
reviewed all the Bible verses I could remember, several times, only to discover
we still had thirty minutes left. So, I stood staring at baby Jesus and prayed
my way through my life and my family. I’ve never thought of myself as a great
prayer warrior, but I’ve learned to cherish private prayer moments. I tend to
start by praying for specific needs in my life and in the life of friends, but
the time is most meaningful when I systematically walk through my life and
discuss all my thoughts and concerns with God.

This year my strongest and longest
prayers were about writing and selling books. I reminded God of my passions and
dreams, and then asked him to speak to my heart and align it with his. I am
sometimes embarrassed that my prayers are nothing more than pitching my
best-case scenario at God and hoping he buys into it. I want to do better.

“Lord, I have all these dreams of
writing and publishing books and being read by people all around the world, and
I have dreams of creating trusts funds and scholarships and giving money away …
I have lots of dreams, but my most honest prayer is this, I want to honor you
with my life, and I don’t know how to do that on my own. You have to teach me.”

It was my genuine prayer, the prayer
of my life. I think Joseph’s prayer was similar. He didn’t have many answers
for his life, or special insights into the future of his young family. He just
followed God, trying to protect the gifts God had given Him (Mary and baby
Jesus), and trusting God for the future.

The Live Nativity is an unselfish
gift from First Baptist Church
to our community; its one more point of contact aimed at a city full of
searching people, one more method of telling the grand story of Jesus. It’s
also a good reason to dress like a shepherd and stand in the cold once a year.
I need the time with God.

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

To learn more about Berry’s newest book, “Running
With God:” http://www.runningwithgodonline.com/

Follow Berry on Twitter at @berrysimpson … Contact
Berry directly: berry@stonefoot.org

Maybe the reason guys like me say
things like, “today’s music doesn’t’ speak to me,” isn’t just because we are
becoming geezers. Maybe it isn’t so much about the music or the lyrics or the
beat, but because we don’t yet have any stories linked to those new songs. However, speaking for myself, since my only
real exposure to current music is in Gold's Gym, and since if I didn't work out
I would hear only what they play on NPR, if I don't have any personal stories
tied to contemporary music, it might be my own fault.

In his clever book, “Manhood for
Amateurs,” Michael Chabon, lamented
the format change at his favorite radio station. They flipped from the oldies
of his youth to contemporary pop, and it hurt. Each of those old songs linked
to a story from Chabon’s life, and whenever he heard an old favorite he also
remembered a favorite old story. He called it, “the mysterious power of the
chance interaction between radio and memory.”

Chabon wrote, “More often there is
no obvious thematic connection between a song on the radio and the memory that
it somehow or other comes to preserve, between the iridescent bubble of the
music and the air of the past that it randomly traps.”

While reading the book I started
thinking of the memories and the stories that I flash to whenever I hear
certain old songs, and I scribbled several in the margin. If I hear Steely Day
singing “Reelin’ in the Years,” for example, I am transported back to the
evening when fellow trombone player Jan Ramey gave me a ride home after evening
band practice and we heard that song for the very first time her station wagon.

If I hear “Beginnings” by Chicago my memory runs
back to my first date with my first girlfriend. If I hear “Never Ending Love
For You” by Delaney and Bonnie I am instantly skiing with Cyndi, clicking my
poles behind me for a rhythm track, singing to her.

If I hear “Jesus is Just Alright
With Me” by The Doobie Brothers I remember sitting in my car on a rainy Sunday
evening outside of Bellview Baptist Church in Hobbs waiting for the song to end
before going inside, listening to the coolest song I had ever heard and the
coolest song I could imagine ever hearing containing the name “Jesus.”

Whenever I hear the opening beats of
“Fallen” by Lauren Woods my head snaps around looking for Cyndi who will
already be walking toward me with arms outstretched ready to dance. It’s part
of our ongoing story, forever linked to that song.

When I hear “Hit the Road Jack,” by
Ray Charles, I remember the weekend when Cyndi was away teaching an aerobics
workshop and the kids and I worked up a surprise for her. When we were ready to
go somewhere, I would say, “Well, it’s time to hit the road,” and Katie would
say, “Jack,” and Byron would say “Don’t you come back no more no more.” They
were both preschoolers, I think. We practiced over and over all weekend, and
when we picked Cyndi up at the airport and tried it on her, it worked
perfectly. We all laughed and laughed we were so proud of ourselves. We repeated
that little mantra many times through the years and I still think of it every
time I hear the song.

I remember the first time I heard
“Hey Jude” by Paul McCartney. I was riding in the backseat of my grandparent’s
car on the way to a family reunion at Kirkland Docks on Lake Brownwood.
I think of that scene every time I hear the song. I also think how strange it
is to link my kind and gentle grandfather, a very conservative small-town
Baptist preacher, with The Beatles and “Hey Jude.” He would’ve been shocked at
the connection.

When I hear “Life Less Ordinary” by
Carbon Leaf I am back on Highway 101 driving north from Ventura, California,
enjoying the sunshine and relaxed freedom of the road, thinking once again of
the extraordinary future I dream of with Cyndi, and I cannot help but smile.

Sunday night at our church we heard
a concert by classical guitarist Rodrigo
Rodriguez, and in one of his medleys
he played a worship song from a few years back titled, “As the Deer.” I was
immediately transported back to a Walk to Emmaus spiritual retreat that I
attended in 1998 during an especially soft spiritual time in my life. After the
concert I told Cyndi, “I could feel my biorhythms slow down when he played that
song. It was as if I settled into a comfortable place.” That song, among
others, will be forever linked to my stories from that weekend.

In fact, I could go on and on to the
point of boredom listing songs linked to stories of my life, and perhaps I
already have. I’m not sure the ones I mentioned are even the most important
ones; they are just the first few I thought of right away. And I wonder if I
would even remember those stories at all if I never heard the songs again. I
can learn to enjoy new songs, but I would hate to lose my stories.

How about you. What are your songs
with stories?

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

To learn more about Berry’s newest book, “Running
With God:” http://www.runningwithgodonline.com/

Follow Berry on Twitter at @berrysimpson … Contact
Berry directly: berry@stonefoot.org

Michael
Chabon wrote about how his life changed when his younger brother was born. “But
it was not until that moment, in early September 1968, that my story truly
began. Until my brother was born, I had no one to tell it to.” (Manhood for
Amateurs)

I wrote in the margin of my book,
“So our story doesn’t exist unless we have someone to tell it to?”

A few years ago Cyndi and I went to Uganda and Kenya to visit our friends John and
Linda Witte. After we came back I couldn’t stop telling stories and writing
about our adventures. One friend told me, “I would rather send you on a trip
and listen to your stories than go on the trip myself.”

Well, I didn’t believe that was
exactly true, but I realized the corollary was true. If I don’t have an
opportunity to tell my stories when I get back, I might as well never go on the
trip. For me the stories were more important than souvenirs. Stories are the
artifacts of life.

One time I heard Gary Barkalow ask
at a Wild at Heart camp, “What is something that you cannot stop doing?” He
wasn’t asking about bad habits or eating chocolate or nervous tics, but rather
he was asking about the clues into our personality and character.

My answer to his question? I cannot
stop telling the stories of my life and the lives around me. If I have any sort
of experience, I have to tell about it. For me, the trip hasn’t happened unless
I have stories to tell. The book hasn’t been read without a story. A
backpacking trip never occurred without a story, and a story doesn’t usually
bubble up unless something spectacular happened – like a disaster, or a storm,
or a beautiful sunrise, or a wild animal. And the best part of running a
marathon is the story-telling session afterward. Without a story to tell, it’s
a waste of 26.2 miles.

One year at CornFest at our house my
friend Todd cut his hand while
carving an ear of corn. He thought he’d have to go to the emergency room to get
stitches until Linda put him back together with Super Glue. It worked
perfectly. In fact, he healed so completely he didn’t even have a scar. The
guys at work didn’t believe his story because he didn’t have a scar. Without a
scar, there was no story; and without a story, it never happened.

Like Michael
Chabon’s, my own brother was born twelve years after I was, so we each grew up
as an only children. We had nothing in common. I was a freshman in college when
Carroll started first grade. We grew up in different phases of a parent’s
lives. We grew up with different friends and different music and different
movies and different family stories. We finally connected during the past ten
years as we raised our own families. We finally had stories to share that both
of us understood; stories about our families and about each other. Now we talk
at least once a week for an hour, usually late at night (late in my world, not
in Carroll’s world). Carroll calls me because he actually remembers to make
phone calls and he is much more social than I am.

Recently we met for lunch at Rosa’s
in Midland and
told stories for a couple of hours. I think we were both surprised at how many
personality traits we had in common. Who knew? It took stories to bring it out.

Roy Blount wrote about a friend of
his who was visiting her mother in a nursing home. Many of the other residents
had Alzheimer’s, but the friend’s mother’s mind was unclouded. “They’ve
forgotten their stories!” she said of the others. “They can say anything!”

I always think of stories as
defining us, of communicating our heart. To say, let me tell you my story, is
to say, let me tell you who I am and what I believe and what I think is
important and who I love and where I’m headed, and all that. To know my stories
is to know me.

And in fact, if I want to describe
someone else to you, the best way to do it would be to tell you a story.

The mother in the nursing home said
if we have no stories we have no boundaries. We can be anybody, which is to be
nobody. One day we are a musician, the next a mountain climber, then a
mechanic, maybe a rocket scientist, maybe a street bum. Stories not only tell
who we are, they keep us true to ourselves.

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

To learn more about Berry’s newest book, “Running
With God:” http://www.runningwithgodonline.com/

Follow Berry on Twitter at @berrysimpson … Contact
Berry directly: berry@stonefoot.org

It was Saturday afternoon and Cyndi
was in Alpine, so I was on solo childcare-duty for the weekend.  I was doing some computer work in my library
at home, paying bills, and all that, when my seven-year-old nephew Kevin, being
a social creature, unlike me, decided to join me at the big table. He brought
his partially-built Lego Jedi Starfighter, as flown by the Lego version of
Anakin Skywalker. He was hoping I would help him finish the starship, which
means he was hoping to watch me put it together for him.

He was disappointed in the outcome
because I wouldn’t help him as much as he wanted me to. I helped him line up
his pieces when he was trying to build a mirror-image of the drawing in the
book – for example, when he was working on the left wing but the drawing was of
the right wing. Working with mirror images is a bit much to expect from a kid.

But I wouldn’t help him look for
missing pieces. I didn’t refuse to help; I was just really slow at actually
getting around to helping. I wasn’t trying to be mean to him, but finding the
correct Lego piece is a skill that can only be learned by repetition. Each time
he eventually found the piece anyway without my help.

Once Kevin got so mad at my stall
tactics he stomped out of the room, pouting and fuming. I let him go; he’d
earned the right to be angry at me and my lack of cooperation, but a few
moments later I heard him digging through his big box of extra Lego pieces in
his bedroom. Then, he came back into the library with the exact piece he had
been looking for.

“See, Uncle Berry,” he bragged, “here it is,” defiantly
showing me who was boss.

“Good for you, Kevin. I knew you
could find it. You are smarter than you think you are.”

He eventually finished his Jedi
Starfighter on his own and went on to save the galaxy. It was a proud
afternoon.

It wasn’t that I was too busy to
help him more, but I’ve been down this road before with my own kids. They
tended to be more interested in completing the final product, the airplane or
fire truck or starship shown on the box. They didn’t really care who did the
actual construction, they just wanted it to be done.

Me, I wasn’t that interested in the
final product at all. I wanted them to learn how to read the diagram and
understand the drawings, find their own pieces, and learn how to make
substitutes when they couldn’t find the exact piece they wanted. I was more
interested in the process than in the final product.

And to be honest, I am actually
happier after the box-cover model has been completed, and played with, and
finally dismantled. That’s when creativity and imagination replace
plan-following routine. That is when improvisation begins.

Maybe that’s why I like that sound
of young hands digging in a Lego box so much; it sounds like creativity to me.

Later, I thought more about the Lego
scenario, and I realized once again how our simple everyday life mirrors the
nature of God. I don’t believe God is as interested in the final result of our
life as much as he’s interested in the process of getting us there. He cares
more about our character than our destination.

I wondered if God ever holds back
from helping us because he wants us to try harder. Does he know there are some
things we can learn only through repetition? I wonder if it makes him happy
when we take the misfit pieces of our life and begin to improvise a new
solution. I wonder if he smiles when he hears us digging through our box of
spare parts.

For the past few months I have been
working around with my list of 100 Life Goals. In fact our Iron Men group that
meets on Thursday mornings has been working on this same project together.
Several of the guys sent their lists to me so I could make a group compilation,
and today at lunch I read those lists for the first time. I was stunned how
personal and honest and specific the goals were. Not all the goals were what
might be considered actual responsible adult behavior, some were wild moon
shots. Some were dug from the bottom corner of the Lego box in hopes they would
fit in with the rest of life. They were improvisational, hopeful, and creative.
I don’t know if any of us will be successful with our entire list. In fact, I
suspect none of us will achieve them all. But I think the process of dreaming
big makes God happy. I believe he likes to hear us digging through the box for
the cool pieces.

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

To learn more about Berry’s newest book, “Running
With God:” http://www.runningwithgodonline.com/

To follow Berry on Twitter …
@berrysimpson

Being “one of us” is a powerful
thing. We are all stronger because of the communities we belong to.

This morning our family engaged in
one of our semi-annual Thanksgiving traditions – we joined 37,000 other runners
and walkers for the 42^nd annual Dallas YMCA Turkey Trot 8-mile and
5K races. It was a great morning; just cool enough stay comfortable in winter
running gear, but warm enough to be pleasant and friendly. It was great to be a
part of such a large tribe of people, to be one of us with all of them. How
often can so many people get together with no fighting and everyone friendly to
each other? The only reason there were police on the scene was to protect us
from traffic, not from each other. There was energy hanging in the air from so
many people with shared goals. It was contagious. We were all wearing the
proper tribal colors (race T-shirts, high-tech fabrics, running shoes), and we
all had fun.

That many people won’t fit in the
small space of a street on one city block. The pack of runners waiting to start
spilled over onto all the sidewalks and side streets and stretched a long way
from the starting line. And a group that size won’t move very quickly, even
after the starting horn sounds. It always takes a long time before everyone is
up to speed; the crowd uncoils like a big slinky. I got closer to the starting
line this year than ever before, which meant I started moving (shuffling) only
two minutes after the horn went off. Usually it takes 8 to 10 minutes before I
start moving my feet.

About a half-mile into the race I
found myself trapped behind three double-sized baby strollers being pushed
side-by-side, the pushers talking and gossiping and giggling like old friends,
all six kids nestled into their blankets. They created a barrier across the
road of about 15 feet, leaving a huge wad of runners dammed up behind them
trying to find a way around. But that sort of thing is what you should expect
in a family event so huge.

By the time I hit mile two, I
finally passed my last group of walkers – I don’t mean runners who occasionally
walk, but people who never intended to run at all. They were easy to identify
by their huge fleece jackets and blue jeans. It took me two miles to catch up
them, meaning they must have lined up very near the starting line to be so far
ahead of me. I got into place about 20 minutes before the race start; they must
have lined up an hour before.

As I settled into my pace for eight
miles, I thought about how running has become such a family marker for us. And
this particular race has been part of our Thanksgiving tradition for ten years.

Running together is something that
has become so important and identifiable with us, yet it started off in our
group back in 1978 with me trying to impress a girl. I thought I had to do
something athletic to win her attention and I choose running because it had the
least skill requirements for a beginner. I was never any good as a runner but I
just kept stumbling along. Who knew Cyndi would eventually join me? Who knew
Byron and Katie would join in? Who knew Katie would marry an athlete and drag
him into our running tribe?

Our beginning with running was
fragile and tenuous to start with, but over time it became a fundamental part
of our story. And it is our shared stories that make us a tribe, that make us …
one of us.

This single activity sets us apart
from most of the world but joins us with the thousands of families we ran with
this morning. Why did we stick to it? How did it become so important? Who
knows?

How often the defining markers of
our tribes, the activities and attitudes that link us together, that bind us
together, are so fragile and thin. Community can be very subtle. We had a lot
of things in common with 37,000 people today, even more things not in common,
yet I might feel more a part of that group even without knowing anyone else’s
name than I might feel with some family members that I’ve known for decades.

The older I get the more I value the
communities I belong to. Maybe its because my family has grown, and grown up,
so its been more important for us to get together. Maybe its because I’m
finally convinced I cannot do it all myself – or I can’t do it well all by
myself – or I no longer want to do it myself. Or maybe I’ve finally listened to
the advice of friends who understood the value of community for their entire
lives.

Community has to be guarded and
cherished. Our tribe is held together only by a few things, but they have
become strong things. I am looking forward to more.

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

To learn more about Berry’s newest book, “Running
With God:” http://www.runningwithgodonline.com/

To follow Berry on Twitter …
@berrysimpson

I was reading from Jesus’ final
words to his disciples before he died: “I am the true vine, and my Father is
the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every
branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.”
(John 15:1-2, NIV)

Two years ago, after reading that
same verse, I wrote in the margin of my Daily Bible, “I lost the election; was
that pruning so my life will be even more fruitful?”

Cyndi and I bought our first house
in 1980 while living in Brownfield,
Texas, when we were just
children.

OK, we weren’t really children; we
had jobs and degrees and bills and a baby, and one of us had a library card,
but it was so long ago it seems like a different life. We lived in a trailer
donated by Cyndi’s mom, in the Careyville Mobile Home Village, because there
were no apartments for rent. After only one winter with the west Texas wind whistling
through that trailer, carrying dust through the walls and blowing out the pilot
in our heater and freezing the water pipes, I had enough. I wanted something
else. We bought a house on Oak
Street from the youth minister at our church, and
one feature of the house was a significant rose garden alongside the driveway.

I ignored the roses and let them
live alone in peace during our first spring in the house, but the second spring
I decided I could learn to become a master rose gardener. I got lots of advice
on how to prune the branches for maximum rose production. I weeded the beds
constantly and fed them and pampered them all spring and summer. I was out
pruning those rose bushes at least two or three days a week and we had
beautiful roses all season long. We had roses in our house and gave them to all
our friends. That year we had a plethora of roses, way more roses than the
previous spring when we left them to grow on their own.

I thought about my rose-farming
experiment when I read this verse from John 15. The part about God pruning the
fruit-bearing branches wasn’t what I expected. My first thought was that he
would prune only the lazy unresponsive non-bearing branches.

As I’ve gotten older and found a
better handle on my real strengths and talents, I’ve slowly eliminated from my
life the activities and projects I don’t do well, focusing instead on my
strengths. I have engaged in self-pruning to maximize my effectiveness and to
live the life God has called me to live. I want to act out of the strength of
my life and not be distracted by the things I don’t do well. Being able to make
those choices is one advantage of getting older.

But if I’m reading John 15
correctly, it says that God will prune away even my strengths and talents, my
fruit-bearing areas, my best branches, to make them even better. Is that what I
want?

Does that mean God might take away
the opportunities I’m good at? Does it mean he might limit my exposure or
impact even when I’m doing what he told me to do? Will God take me out of roles
and responsibilities where I excel? As in, city government?

Most of us aren’t the best judges of
our own lives. We don’t recognize our own strengths and we underestimate the
effect of our lives on people around us. Often, those same people can see our
strength and significance better than we see them ourselves.

So if God prunes something out of
our life that we thought was one of our best attributes, well, maybe it wasn’t
our best after all. Just because we get a lot of praise and attention from
something doesn’t mean it’s successful in God’s eyes. In fact, all of that may
become a distraction from where God really wants us to be.

So Tuesday morning, after reading
from John 15, I posted this on Twitter: “Every branch that does bear fruit he
prunes. Will he cut back something I’m good at, to improve?”

Because my Twitter account rolls
over to Facebook, I got several responses to the post. Mark wrote: “Perhaps
that’s what the city council thing was about? It made room for Running with
God.” (Running with God is the title of my first book.)

I think Mark was right. In fact, the
first time I noticed this particular verse was when I read it on November 16,
2007, only 10 days after losing a city-wide election. It was all still fresh on
my mind when I made those notes in the margin of my Bible.

But now, two years later, at least
for this particular example, the part of my life that God pruned away, the part
I thought was so important to my identity and significance, well, after only a
few months, a few weeks even, it was gone from my mind. I never missed it. Some
day I may take another turn at government, but for now it has simply
disappeared. It was so long ago it seems like a different life.

Pruning is always future-oriented;
the loss happens now, but the gains come later. At the moment of pruning, there
is no evidence of what is to come; we have no proof there will be something
better. All we have is the faith that we will be more fruitful. If I believe
John 15, which I do, then I must relax and trust God when a part of my life
gets pruned away, and wait to see where the new and better fruit will come from
next.

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

One Friday found me at Wendy's in Plainview
(an appropriately named town) eating lunch, on my way to Aunt Teena’s farm near
Sedan, New
Mexico, to pick com. I was reading from my Daily
Bible, from Jeremiah 36, about a time when God told Jeremiah to write down all
his sermons and prophecies.

By this time in Jeremiah’s life he had been preaching for over twenty
years; what a chore it must have been to recall everything he’d said. I doubt
he had a folder of sermon notes in his file cabinet. Maybe he kept some form of
journal through the years – that isn’t too farfetched since much of the book of
Jeremiah is made up of his personal observations and analysis. Also, since he
was following Gods direction to write it all down, maybe God helped him
remember.

The story says Jeremiah asked another man, Baruch, to write down the
words while Jeremiah dictated. Being a writer who edits a lot, I can’t imagine writing
with pen and ink on a papyrus scroll without a word processor. Almost nothing
that I write is readable on the first draft.

But they did it, and Baruch went to the temple to read Jeremiah’s words
aloud. Some of the king’s officials got wind of the reading and had Baruch give
them a private reading. What they heard scared them. It was obvious to them these
were words from God, and they recognized Jeremiah’s hand in all of it. They
knew that King Jehoiakim needed to hear it.

The next scene is one of those stories I have known since early
childhood. I remember the picture from children's Bible class showing a regal-looking
bearded king sitting in his throne beside an open fire while Baruch read the
words.

The Bible says Jehoiakim used a scribe’s knife – I guess an early
editing tool – to slice off the portion of the scroll after the words were read
aloud and then burned those pieces in the fire. It was a dramatic scene, which
is probably why I remember the picture so well even though I haven’t seen a
copy in at least 45 years.

What did Baruch think as he was reading? The king was destroying months
of work right before his eyes. Surely he was angry about that; yet he was
reading aloud before the king himself, an honor few experienced. And what would
happen when he read the last paragraph and it was burned up – would the king turn
his scribe’s knife on Baruch? He must have worried about that as he read.

I wonder how often our work for God gets burned up by some contemptuous
unbeliever after we’ve spent months or years working on it? Do we wonder why we
did it all when the only remainder is smoke curling up to the ceiling?

And why did God expect Jeremiah and Baruch to go through all of this if
he knew it would be burned up? Did God intentionally waste their time? Did he
assign them a futile mission as a mean joke?

No, of course not. I think God was giving King Jehoiakim one more
chance to repent before the hammer fell on him. Or maybe God’s intended
audience that day was never the king himself but some member of his royal
court. Preachers and teachers never know for certain which person in their
class is the real target.

All we can do is speak what God gives us, when he asks us, and trust
him with the outcome. After all, Jeremiah’s words were burned, but I still have
a copy.

Cyndi likes to say, “It’s possible to become richer by giving away.”
The problem with giving away – whether money or home-cooked food or talent and
energy, or even written words directed by God – is that we don’t know what the
recipient will do with the gift. If we worry about whether it will be used or
appreciated, well, we haven’t really given it away, have we? We simply have to
give ourselves and our stuff away and trust God to take care of it.

Jeremiah must have known the only way to preserve his words for all
time was to give them away, even if that meant they might be destroyed by an
unbelieving king. His gift certainly lasted longer than the arrogant King
Jehoiakim. There I was, 2,600 years later, in Wendy’s, in Plainview, reading Jeremiah’s gift.

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

To learn more about Berry’s newest book, “Running
With God:” http://www.runningwithgodonline.com/

To follow Berry on Twitter …
@berrysimpson