Some Thoughts on Running

I have found there to be an inextricable link between how I feel (emotionally, mentally, spiritual) and how much I exercise. When I moved to Colorado six years ago I quickly got into trail running, which has evolved into urban/street running here in Boston.

Good weeks and bad weeks have an eery correlation to how many runs I can get in.

Is the connection simply a matter of exercise versus no (or little) exercise? Or is there more to it than that? I’ve thought about this a lot, but a conversation I had on Sunday put words to a truth I had known but not been able to express.

I was talking to a visitor at REUNION who was in town to watch a friend run the Boston Marathon. We chatted for a while about running and I mentioned how I used to hate running. Even as a soccer player I struggled to find motivation to get out there and run. It wasn’t until I was about 26 that running even became remotely enjoyable (and a lot of that had to do with the beauty of Durango).

After I mentioned that my new friend said this: “Well, when you are younger, running is a struggle because we don’t like to be alone with ourselves for too long.”

Oh man! How true is that. And that put to words something I’ve been feeling for a while: running is not just good for me physically it provides one of the rare spaces where there is no phone, no music, no computer, no conversations, no books, no tv, no distractions.

Just me and myself. Just me and God.

More and more I see that people (of all ages) struggle with this. We are always “on”, we are always connected. We don’t like to be alone. We really don’t like to be alone with ourselves.

But my soul craves this space, and so I run not just to exercise but to get to know myself better, to disconnect, and hopefully to hear from God. That’s why I run.

Quick Hitters

Updates in bullet form:

  • Headed to Dallas, TX early Wednesday morning for round two of the Leadership Networks University Leadership Community. This never seems to come at a convenient time in the semester, but I am grateful to get some time away and focus on the big picture for a couple of days.
  • We are deep into preparing our leadership teams for the fall. I’m excited to see new students coming on board and excited to be a part of the Sojourn story next year.
  • We held a baggo (or cornhole) tournament at UMB on Friday (picture). Met some new people and had some good times with old friends!
  • Tons of writing and prep to do today: it’s a short week!

Links of the Week

Nearly blew up the blog yesterday with the baby news. On to the links:

  1. Peter Carroll thinks you can change the world, Donald Miller tells us why
  2. I’m not a huge NBA fan but I found this article to be fascinating. The pay off comes near the end when the author writes: “Consider the NBA at its very best,” but the best line comes in paragraph three: “The stars who win championships allow themselves to be criticized and coached.”
  3. A familiar sounding story…I love the title “Important Things Are Hard To Do“
  4. Scot McKnight’s look in to the future of college ministry
  5. Seth Godin on whether or not to pay attention to the opinions of others

We Are Having…

A baby! See what I did there…

We went to the doctor yesterday for our big mid-way check up and ultrasound, and everything looks great so far. It really is amazing what they can see and show you with that machine. We spent about 45 minutes watching the child kick, squirm, and stretch…apparentely it is quite active.

And we found out the gender.

But we are not telling…

…so stay tuned!

NT Wright Quote of the Week

I just finished NT Wright’s excellent book on character and virtue: After You Believe. In it he argues winsomely to wrap up the quest for Christian character inside the ideas of worship and mission. They all go together. We pursue virtue and character as an act of worship and to help us in our mission.

He writes that the 4 big virtues are humility, patience, chastity, and charity. These four big words contain a bunch of other ideas (i.e. faith, hope, and love, the fruits of the spirit, etc). This section comes from his thoughts on chastity, but I would argue they really capture the essence of the book:

“Christians have always insisted that self-control is one of the nine fold varieties of Spirit’s fruit. Yes, it’s difficult. Yes, you have to work at it and discover why certain temptations, at certain times and places, are hard to resist.

“That because chastity is a virtue: it’s not first and foremost a rule which you decide either to keep or to break; it’s certainly not something you can calculate according to a principle, such as the greatest happiness for the greatest number; and in particular, as Jesus himself indicated, it won’t be generated by going with the flow of what comes naturally.

“This is where the genuinely celibate, like Jesus himself…have discovered the joy of a ‘second nature’ self-control which much of our culture, like most of the ancient world, never even imagines.

“By contrast, as those of us who care pastorally, or in families, for people who have embraced the present habits of society will know, the bruises and wounds caused by those habits are deep, long-lasting, and life-decaying. The church is often called a killjoy for protesting against sexual license. But the real killing of joy comes with the grabbing of pleasure…the price tag is hidden at the start, but the physical and emotional debt incurred will take a long time to pay off.

“Here Patience and Humility come into play once more. The frantic urge toward sexual intimacy is part of the drive to express yourself, to push yourself forward, to insist that this is who you are and this is how you intend to behave.

“No, says Humility; you don’t discover your true self that way. You find it by giving yourself away. Precisely, agrees Patience: taking the waiting out of wanting is short-changing yourself and everybody else. The virtues are linked together…if you want one of them, you better practice them all.”

Finish Strong

It’s the final month of school for most of our students and people are starting to think about finals, summer jobs, traveling, internships, and all that good stuff. And, it is a super busy season for us…readying new leaders, finishing well relationally, planning new things, evaluating the year, etc, etc, etc. All on top of the normal rhythms of groups and one-on-ones and meetings.

I’m ready for vacation.

But I don’t want to check out early. At our last leadership community I shared with our students the story of Caleb. I always come back to Caleb when I think about finishing well, finishing strong.

Consider Caleb’s example (you can read about him in Numbers 13 and 14)…

  • He was one of only two Israelite spies (Joshua was the other) who saw how good the promised land was and believed the people could take it over.
  • He was sold out by the other 10 spies who freaked out because of the “giants in the land” and their weapons.
  • He and Joshua were the only two people from his generation allowed to enter the promised land.
  • He had to wander around the desert while his contemporaries died out, all the while knowing the good things he was missing out on. He had to question his fate a ton, I would think.
  • He went to a lot of funerals and dug a lot of graves.
  • And then, God picked Joshua to be the leader to take over from Moses. Joshua got the book deal, the twitter followers, the big church. Caleb had his life and his family and a hope for a plot of land.

If anyone had an excuse to give up, to lose hope, to become cynical or bitter or entitled or frustrated or angry or to quit, it was Caleb.

We don’t know much about what Caleb did for those 40 years, but we know how his story ends. He shows up again in Joshua 14. Everyone else had received their allotment of land, and finally Caleb says, “It’s time for me to take mine.”

And we read this:

6 Now the people of Judah approached Joshua at Gilgal, and Caleb son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite said to him, “You know what the LORD said to Moses the man of God at Kadesh Barnea about you and me. 7 I was forty years old when Moses the servant of the LORD sent me from Kadesh Barnea to explore the land. And I brought him back a report according to my convictions, 8 but my fellow Israelites who went up with me made the hearts of the people melt in fear. I, however, followed the LORD my God wholeheartedly. 9 So on that day Moses swore to me, ‘The land on which your feet have walked will be your inheritance and that of your children forever, because you have followed the LORD my God wholeheartedly.’

10 “Now then, just as the LORD promised, he has kept me alive for forty-five years since the time he said this to Moses, while Israel moved about in the wilderness. So here I am today, eighty-five years old! 11 I am still as strong today as the day Moses sent me out; I’m just as vigorous to go out to battle now as I was then. 12Now give me this hill country that the LORD promised me that day. You yourself heard then that the Anakites were there and their cities were large and fortified, but, the LORD helping me, I will drive them out just as he said.”

13 Then Joshua blessed Caleb son of Jephunneh and gave him Hebron as his inheritance. 14 So Hebron has belonged to Caleb son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite ever since, because he followed the LORD, the God of Israel, wholeheartedly. 15 (Hebron used to be called Kiriath Arba after Arba, who was the greatest man among the Anakites.)

Then the land had rest from war.

Somehow, through all that, he still followed God wholeheartedly. He finished strong.

I love that image of 85-year-old Caleb still looking for a fight, still ready to go, still throwing himself fully into the work God had asked him to do. And somehow all of that contributed to peace in the land.

When I get tired I think about Caleb…I want to finish strong too.

Easters!

We had a great Easter Sunday yesterday. Unofficially 650 people came to REUNION (Sojourn’s church partner), which will be a record. I love the energy in the Hilton when the room is so packed.

And, we hosted friends and family in our home afterwards. It is always great to bring family, church, students, and Amy’s work together in one place because it doesn’t happen often (or at least as often as we would like). It was on mission, and most of all it was FUN.

One of my all time favorite Easters!

Start with Why (Quote of the Week)

Great story from a book that has captured my attention: Start With Why

The story of two Stonemasons:

A stonemason is asked, “Do you like your job?” He responds: “I’ve been building this wall for as long as I can remember. The work is monotonous. I’m out in the scorching hot sun all day. The stones are heavy and lifting them day after day is backbreaking. I’m not even sure if this project will be completed in my lifetime. But it’s a job. It pays the bills.”

A second stonemason, working on the same wall, is asked, “Do you like your job?” He responds: “I’ve working on this wall for as long as I can remember. The work can be monotonous. Yes, it can be really hot out here and lifting these stones, day after day, is back-breaking. I’m not even sure if this project will be completed in my lifetime. But I love my job…I’m building a cathedral.”

Build cathedrals, not walls!