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

Proverbs 4:23 says, “Watch
over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life.”
(NAS) Again, in a different version, “Above all else, guard your heart, for it
is the wellspring of life.” (NIV)

I have known this verse – I’ve had it
memorized – since my college days, at least 30 years. Yet, for most of those
years I wasn’t diligent about my heart at all. I didn’t even understand what it
meant to watch over or guard my heart.

Guarding our hearts, there’s more to this
than merely avoiding evil. Erwin McManus compared it to building core strength.
Anyone who has worked out in the gym under an instructor for the past ten
years, or read a magazine article about getting stronger, knows that everything
comes from our core strength. In the fitness world, it is all about core
strength training nowadays.

Cyndi and I ran the Dallas
Half-Marathon last Sunday, around White
Rock Lake
and adjacent neighborhoods. Our original plan was to run with Katie as a family
sort of thing, but then she got pregnant and wimped out of the race. So, it was
just Cyndi and me (and 4,000 other runners we didn’t know).

I actually handled
the distance better than I expected considering my poor excuse for long training
runs; well, I was beaten-up and tired at the end, but not defeated. One reason
was because I’ve been training with Jeff Galloway's method: alternating running
five minutes and walking one minute; it has helped a lot.

Galloway has been part
of my overall scheme for recovering from injury, coping with seemingly
permanent knee aches, and my strategy to keep doing this sort of thing for a
few more decades.

He encourages runners to insert regular walking breaks into
their running, whatever the distance. Galloway
wrote, “When taken from the beginning of all long runs, walk breaks erase
fatigue, speed recovery, reduce injury, and yet bestow all of the endurance
benefits of the distance covered.”

I kept to my 5/1 schedule, making small adjustments
whenever necessary to space my walking breaks with the water stops. I was able
to start back running every time, and I maintained a better average pace than I
would’ve had I tried to run every step. That is, until I got to I0 miles.

At 10
miles, I just felt drained. I hit the wall. I don't know if it was because that
was the length of my longest training run, or if it was just what happened that
day. I adjusted my pattern to running 4:00 and walking 1:00, but I still
struggled. I eventually finished the half-marathon by walking 100 steps and
running I00 steps (my old backpacking trick). I wanted to finish in less than three
hours, so I kept working hard. I did finally finish in 2:55. An embarrassingly
slow time to actually commit to paper and hard drive, but even at that, it was
about 20 minutes better than my last half-marathon in Austin. It is my recovery-era half-marathon
P.R. Hopefully, the first comeback in a new trend.

Back in 2005 when I first
realized my left knee was hurt, I actually looked forward to surgery. I wanted
a quick fix to put it back like it was. I was willing to put up with surgery if
that’s what it took to fix it in a hurry.

What I eventually discovered, thanks
to my new friends at the Seton Clinic in Austin, was that what I needed
instead, was to increase my core strength. I followed a prescribed series of
exercises every day to build my core strength and correct my muscle imbalances.
It is a project I’ll continue to work on for the rest of my life if I want to
keep moving.

It’s a similar story about our heart. We want quick fixes, weekend
seminars, and fast solutions, but it takes a lifetime of guarding and feeding
and protecting and building core strength to avoid heart injury. That is the
“with all diligence” part.

Everything of value comes from the core. Everything
comes from our heart. We have to go to our core and get stronger inside if we
want to be productive and long-lasting in our heart.

This is not a passive
activity. We have to take the initiative to get stronger. We can’t just hope or
pray it gets stronger, we have to work it. We have to do the exercises.

We also
have to eliminate the things that hurt us. What have I allowed to inform my
life? It is good? What have I allowed to shape my heart? Am I feeding my heart
what it needs? What kind of crappyjack have I been eating?

Proverbs tells me to
guard my heart, for it is the wellspring of life. God actually sees me as
generative, able to create life. My heart is a wellspring; life can flow from
me.

This is way different than merely protecting what I have or guarding what I
know or staying away from evil. This is not a defensive posture, but an
offensive posture. I am supposed to use my heart to create life in other
people.

How about you? How do you guard your heart? How do you strengthen your
core?“

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

This morning I was reading a series of parables taught by Jesus, and I
was struck by how often Jesus said, "He who has ears, let him hear,"
and "Blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they
hear." Everyone Jesus talked to had ears and eyes, but not everyone heard
what Jesus said. Some were paying attention of other voices. Jesus was speaking
to those who were spiritually tuned in, or as we used to say in CB radio days,
"People who had their ears on." Lots of people heard Jesus, but fewer
listened to him, and fewer still let him speak directly into their life. They
are the ones Jesus blessed.

l woke up early this morning, at 5:40 AM, to get ready for my men's
class, and the song lyric running through my head as I got out of bed was,
"Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see,” from
Strawberry Fields Forever by John
Lennon. John was correct. It’s a lot
easier to stumble through life not seeing the world and people around us; it
was easier for the crowd to hang around Jesus if they kept their ears and eyes
closed. Easier, but they missed the encounter with the Son of God. They
misunderstood what they saw, thinking he was merely a miracle-working holy man,
missing the Savior of the World.

The reason I was singing Strawberry
Fields in my head first thing this morning was, well, I’m singing one song or
another in my head almost all the time, and quite often the song is my first
thought in the morning, but I was singing John
Lennon in my head because I have been watching a movie this week called Across
The Universe. My son, Byron, bought the movie for me a year ago, and he asked
if I'd watched it whenever we talked. I finally watched it this week. It’s a musical based on songs by The Beatles
and set in New York City
in the late I960s. It has been playing inside my head all week.

I found myself walking down the sidewalk listening to the guitar riff
from Come Together. And then I drove by Cyndi’s school say hello and to flirt
with her, and in my head I was singing, "Dear Prudence, won’t you come out
and play.”

Then I was working on some writing and in my head I heard, "There
is nothing you can do that can't be done, nothing you can say that can it be
sung, there is nothing you can know that isn't known, nothing you can see that
isn’t shown." I don’t know whether those lyrics helped or hurt the writing
process, but they wouldn’t go away, and I didn’t really mind.

There are some movies that I can
watch and enjoy and appreciate before filing them away in my memory for future
reference. Other movies simply take over my life for a few days. I’ve learned
not to fight the take-over, but to wallow in it. I’ll watch a particular movie
several times and let it sink in. Most of the time I'm not even sure which
images affect me; I just know I need to linger in the experience.

This week I was also listening to an audio
book titled, "My Revolutions," by Hari Kunzru. It was about a 1960s
radical-turned-terrorist, living quietly under a new name with a family that
didn't know his history, who finds his past catching up with him. Reading (or listening to)
that book, and watching the movie, put my brain firmly into the late I960s all
week.

In real time I was too young to understand the I960s. I was too young
to appreciate The Beatles until I was in college, long after they had broken
up. I was too young to be a hippie; in fact, I'm not sure we actually had any
hippies in Kermit, Texas. I did grow my hair out in the I970s,
but I was never a hippie. And I certainly never lived like the characters in
the movie or the book. Yet, I couldn’t shake them off.

So thinking about what Jesus said, one reason I read my Bible is to
keep my eyes and ears open. I want the words and character of God to haunt me
though the rest of the day in the same way that movie did. Even if I don't have
a specific verse in mind or a point to ponder, I know if I just read and wallow
in it, it will make me a better man. I don't want to misunderstand what I see. I
don't want to live an easy life with my eyes closed. I want to live with open
eyes and open ears. I want
to be blessed.

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

To order Berry’s newest book, “Running
With God,” go to:

http://journalentries.typepad.com/journal-entries/running-with-god.html

You can follow Berry on Twitter … @berrysimpson

I was recently in a church personnel
committee meeting where we were discussing whether to hire one of our own young
adults as a youth ministry intern. Paul mentioned that this would be a great
opportunity for our young man to understand the stirring he is feeling in his
heart toward full-time ministry. Paul said, “He is hoping for a defining
moment.’

I joked (but like all jokes I was
partially serious), “I am in my 50’s and I am still looking for that defining
moment to tell me who I will be when I grow up.”

A fellow committee member joined in,
“After 70 years, I am still looking.”

Then Lee kicked in, too: “I still
haven’t found it after 80 years of looking.” It was a tough room; hard to be
the sage.

The next day during my noontime run,
I spent five miles thinking about our discussion of defining moments. I
thought, “There is good news and bad news in this.” The bad news was that none
of us would ever have that single defining moment that lays out the whole path
of our life. The good news? The same thing; we would never have that single
moment. We are more likely to have many moments that lay out our near term
plans and mark the phases of our lives. As I ran, I thought back through my
life of those occasions when I got a glimpse, maybe just a sliver, of defining
moments.

I remembered the moment when I knew
beyond a doubt Cyndi was the girl for me. It was a few weeks before
Thanksgiving of 1978, and I was sitting at the kitchen table in my college apartment
in Norman, Oklahoma, talking to Cyndi on the telephone.
She was in her dorm room at the University
of New Mexico, in Albuquerque. This was back in the day when
calling long distance was a big deal and cost lots of money. As we talked, I
was flipping through my Bible, and my eyes landed on Proverbs 16:9. Right then,
in that moment, in the middle of my conversation with Cyndi, I knew what to do.
I was crystal clear to me. It wasn’t scary. I knew I should marry Cyndi, and I
knew God would bless it. It was a defining moment for me.

I remember another moment, in the
spring of 1990, while sitting in my adult Sunday school class at First Baptist
Church, Midland, when God called me out. The challenge I heard so clearly in my
head was, “You are wasting our time and wasting your gifts sitting in class;
you should be teaching.” Later, over lunch, I told Cyndi about it, and she
said, “It’s about time.” That evening I asked Marilyn, our department director,
“I need to be teaching, can you find a class for me?” That moment has defined a
large part of me for almost 20 years.

The next defining moment I
remembered was when I was riding in my red Ford Ranger pickup on a snowy winter
Friday, in November 1998. I was driving to Martina’s
Bakery to pick up some beef tortas to take to Cyndi for lunch, when God spoke
clearly to me about a new writing ministry. My heart had been hungry for a
wider audience to share what God had given me. It was a breakthrough. I decided
that afternoon to start emailing weekly essays to a small group of friends, and
title them Journal Entries. After a few months, when I started having doubts
about it all, Cyndi reminded me, “You were called by God to do this. I know it,
because it comes from your heart, and your motives are true.”

I remembered
more moments when God continued to define me as a writer. Both were at Wild at
Heart camps. The first time was at a Boot Camp in the fall of 2003, in
spiritual conversation about my true name. The second was at an Advanced Camp
in the spring of 2008 after I saw the movie, August Rush. The message in both
of those encounters was too deep and too personal to write about, yet, but the message
I heard was similar – there is more here than you know.

And then I heard again when I
published my first book, June 2009. It was a defining moment to hold it in my
hand, to see the official bar code printed on the back, to see it for sale
online, to understand that I can do this, and to know that I can do it again.
It felt like the first moment of my next phase.

Not all my defining moments were
happy. In 2007 I lost a city-wide election after serving in city government for
twelve years. It was a hard message, that it was time for me to move on, time
to move boldly into the next phase of my life, time to put past successes
behind me and press forward. It was easy to write, but hard to do.

As I continued to run, nearing the
gym and hot shower, the familiar soreness in my left knee reminded me of a
couple more defining moments. My first marathon finish in 1983 at the Golden
Yucca Marathon in Hobbs, NM;
and then my 6^th marathon finish in 1998 at the Paper Chase Marathon
in Amarillo.
They were separated by many years and thousands of training miles, yet they
were similar moments, similar gut checks. Both races were too slow, but in each
case I was proud of myself that I could suffer and survive, that I could finish
without walking off the course.

Do you
have any stories you’d like to share? Any defining moments from your life? Mark
Batterson wrote, “It is the favor of God that gives me a sense of destiny. I
know that God can intervene at any moment and turn it into a defining moment.”
(Wild Goose Chase)

Tell me
yours …

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

Order Berry’s newest book, “Running With God,” from
Amazon.com …

http://www.amazon.com/RUNNING-GOD-Berry-Simpson/dp/1607915448/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1252036627&sr=8-1

You can follow Berry on Twitter …
@berrysimpson

Copyright 2009 Berry D.
Simpson, all rights reserved.

October 20 is a big day
for me; it is Christmas, in a way.

Each year I read through
"The Daily Bible in Chronological Order," one day at a time. Since
it’s arranged chronological order, it reads more like a grand story, from
beginning to end. The big story of God and mankind.  The psalms and prophets are mingled in place
with the historical accounts; Paul’s letters are placed where they belong among
the record in Acts, and like that.

On October 20, after
almost ten full months of daily readings, the story changes in a big way. Jesus
Christ is born. So every year I can celebrate Christmas in October.

Last year I sent out a
whole slew of text messages announcing Merry Christmas. As it turns out I
confused a lot of people who received the message but didn't know who it came
from. I got quite a few replies asking, "Who is this?" So this year I
posted my Merry Christmas on Facebook and email. I don't have much of a
presence on Twitter, yet, but I gave that a try as well.

Unfortunately the
Christmas story is so familiar and I have read it so many times it is hard to
read it again. My mind jumps ahead and forms the words before my eyes get to
them. That’s one good reason to read the story in October instead of December;
it sort of catches me by surprise.

I thought about
Zechariah, the husband of Elizabeth
and father of John the Baptist. When
the angel told him that he would finally be a father after so many years, he
said, “How can I be sure? My wife and I are very old." And because of that
the angel took away his ability to speak. I wrote in the margin of my Bible:
"Seems harsh; surely he was allowed one question. Moses argued with God in
front of the burning hush and he didn't get into trouble." What did
Zechariah do that was so bad?

And then the story
shifts to Mary, mother of Jesus, who was confronted by an angel who said,
"Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you." It
says Mary was greatly troubled at his words. I wrote in the margin: "I can
see why the presence of an angel might scare her, but his words should be
affirming not troubling." Why was Mary so afraid?

I don't know why
Zechariah got into trouble or why Mary was afraid; it was only words. But I
know my words to God matter, as do his words to me. Sometime I get so
comfortable praying I forget how important it is, what a privilege it is, how
eternal it is. I forget the power of words.

I don't know why
Zachariah got into so much trouble after asking only one question. We know from
other stories in the Bible that God usually allowed a lot of questions. There
must be more to this story than we’re told. Something must have been going on
between Zachariah and God that we aren't privy to, but it must have been clear
to Zachariah since he didn't fight back and doesn't appear to have resented
what happened to him. in fact, once his son was born, and once Zachariah’s
voice was restored, the first thing he did was praise God. He didn’t complain
and didn’t ask why.

I think Zachariah got
into trouble because of the condition of his heart rather than his words. I
take from this story that my words are important to God, but not as important
as my heart. I don't have to live in fear that I might pray the wrong thing or
ask the wrong question. What I need to be concerned about is the condition of
my heart and the status of my relationship with God.

What about Mary? Why was
she so troubled by the angel's words? Maybe in the same way that I get nervous
and start moving backwards when someone says, “You'd be really great at
this.." I try to avoid being recruited for something new.

Mary didn't stay troubled. As the angel laid out the plan,
Mary began to praise God; her words – the Song of Mary, the Magnificat – are
some of the best in the entire Bible.

We don't have to be afraid of the words from God. Even if
what he is asking us to do is troubling at first, We just have to relax and
listen and let him speak to us. We can trust God when he speaks.

October 20 was a strong day for me. Let me be one of the
first to say to you, Merry Christmas.

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

      One
of the things I've wondered about for as long as I’ve been a wonderer is how did
the Romans do it? And Monday, while I was running in the cool rainy weather,
listening to a podcast interview with some famous movie animator, for some
reason I wondered about it again. How did the Romans conquer the world, rule
the wide variety of people, collect all those taxes, and build aqueducts to
move water hundreds of miles, using Roman numerals? How did they accomplish
anything without a place-value numbering system?

      In
my opinion, you can't do anything with Roman numerals except try to look
impressive. There are a few remaining users: the Super Bowl, Popes and Kings,
some clock faces, literary outlines, the Olympics, and the names of Army corps.
Publishers used to use Roman numerals to indicate the date of publication, and
I suspect they did it to intentionally obscure the actual date so readers
couldn’t know the true age of a book, but they don't use them anymore.

      Isaac
Newton and Gottfried Leibnitz invented their own mathematical notations and
numbering systems in order to develop and describe calculus. The Romans
couldn't even do 1st-grade math with their numbering system. Who knows how to
subtract IV from XXIX? No one does without converting to regular numbers. And
how do you express zero with Roman numerals? You can’t.

      Yet,
the Romans built some spectacular things. How did they do it? Was their secret
unlimited slave labor? Could they have had so many people working on a design that
the math didn’t matter? Those aqueducts – maybe they built multiple aqueducts
of various designs, and then tore down the ones that didn’t work, a grand municipal
trial-and-error method based on slave labor? I don't think so.

      “Who
cares?” you might ask, and I can’t blame you if you do. The only reason I
thought about Roman numerals while listening to an animator describe his work
was because only a few minutes before I had been listening to a different
podcast by Erwin McManus. Something he said was still ringing in my ears. He
compared our lives to Roman numerals, saying our value is determined by who we
have next to us. I couldn’t stop thinking about what he said.

      For
example, a Roman "I” can stand for one (I) or two (II), or three (III), or
four (IV), or nine (IX), and so on, based on what symbol is next to it. Unlike our
place-value numbering system, it is a relational numbering system. The value of
a symbol is based on who it’s related to.

      I’ve
seen in my own life, as I get older, that my true value comes from who I stand
next to rather than my actual place value. As McManus said, I’m like a Roman
numeral, whose value is determined by the other numerals around it.

      So it is for all of us. Our
value in this world is based less on absolute place value and more on who we
are next to, who we are related to. Our value comes from who we help, who we
learn from, who we team up with, and who we serve alongside.

      I don’t think I’m finished
thinking about this, though. Maybe during tomorrow’s run it will occur to me
that we are all more like differential equations, or more like cuneiform, or
maybe even more like cave paintings. What do you think?

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

      Erwin
McManus wrote. "We want to feel good about ourselves more than we want
ourselves to become good." (Stand Against the Wind).

      We
want to feel like we’re smart more than we want to study and learn. We want to
feel like we can sing all the notes more than we want to devote endless hours
studying the music. We want to feel like marathon runners more than we want to
do 22-mile training runs. We want to feel like we are getting stronger more
than we actually want to use our strength to help people.

      So
Wednesday morning I went to Cyndi’s Body Pump class at Gold's Gym at 5:30 AM. I
have been going to this particular early class since last spring, yet, I can’t
think of anything I do more against my basic nature than getting up at 5:00 AM.
My goal is to make at least three Pump classes each weak, and I go early on
Wednesdays only because Cyndi teaches and I want to be in her class.

      I
have been doing Body Pump workouts for about four years now, and I can tell I
have put on significant muscle mass. I am stronger today than I've ever been,
including back when I was much younger.

      Body
Pump is a group exercise class using low weights and high repetitions. The
weights are easy to adjust, and the challenge of the class is to put enough
weight on the bar to create a meaningful workout yet not so much you can’t
complete the routines. There is some trial-and-error involved in converging on
the perfect weight. My personal goal is to have enough weight on my bar that l
can't actually complete every single rep. I want to get stronger, and the only
way I know how to get stronger is to lift as much as possible, and the only way
I know how much is possible is to have enough weight so that I can't keep
lifting it. I’m sure that isn’t the officially recommended method for weight
determination, but it’s my theory and practice.

      That means that while I’m
getting stronger, I’m not that good at the Body Pump routines. I have to take
breaks and miss reps.

      One
of the reasons I don't worry as much about perfect Pump routines as I do about actual weight lifted is because of
something I read in an Outside Magazine. The article said our goal shouldn't be
simply to excel at the gym machines and classes and all that. Too many guys
workout hard mainly so they can be good at working out. The have perfect
machine-technique in order to be really good at the machines.

      Our goal should be
functional strength, not gym technique. I don’t want to just be stronger than I
was before, I want to be strong enough to run marathons, strong enough to help
friends move into a new house, strong enough to play all day with my nephew or
someday with grandkids, strong enough to haul a 65 lbs. backpack seven miles up
a trail at I0,000' altitude, and strong enough to be able to keep doing all
that stuff for a long time. I want to get stronger because I want freedom of
choices.

      All
that work in the gym is mostly worthless if it doesn't translate into real
life. If it doesn't make a difference in how I live and relate to other people,
it is just busy work. Maybe being fitter will allow me to live longer. but who
cares that I live longer if I’m living only for myself.

      Later Wednesday morning,
after class, as I was working on my lesson for Sunday’s young-adult Bible study
class, I couldn’t help thinking about my early morning gym workout. I thought
about how my biceps and shoulders were a little sore every time I moved my
backpack. I realized it doesn't matter how much I teach about Psalms (this
week's lesson: Psalm 5I) or how good I teach, or any of that, if what I learn
doesn't make a difference in my everyday life. I don’t want to simply feel good
about myself as a teacher. It is wasted effort to get pumped-up spiritually
just to be better at what happens inside the church building, just as it is a
waste to get pumped-up physically just to be better inside the gym. I don’t
want to merely feel good about myself, I want to become good, I want to do
good.

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