The annual Peachtree Road Race in Atlanta is 6.2 miles down Peachtree Road from Buckhead to Piedmont Park in Midtown. Right around the 3-mile mark is the beginning of a long hill, nicknamed Cardiac Hill, which happens to pass by Piedmont Hospital. When the summer sun heats up the asphalt and the tens of thousands of runners flood the streets, that hill tests the participants' energy, will, and resolve. From where will their strength come? What reserves are left? What is their source of life?
The pandemic has rearranged so much of our lives, our communities, and our priorities. Combined with the issues of our day, our political season, and social media, we have become exposed in surprising ways. Where do we find the energy to endure, to keep going, to maintain hope? When churches are not offering full services or fellowship gatherings, when relationships are curtailed, we are left with just us and God. Is He enough?
He is. More than enough. We often focus too much on other people rather than directly on God. Think of this: do you rely on others to help your relationship with God, or do you find that your relationship with God actually helps you to relate to others? Both are true, but my hope is that the latter is our usual experience. God can use people in our lives, and He places us in faith families and calls us to love one another and carry each other's burdens. But the source of life, the life-giver, the strength-restorer, the hope-affirmer is always God.
In 2 Corinthians, Paul reminds his brothers and sisters of this truth. When things are difficult, we come back to our source. If we've been relying on other people and they are taken from us (or at least socially-distanced), then we falter and feel aimless. We can come back to Jesus. We die to ourselves, die to our fleshly, human-focused idolatries, and we can find that Jesus is the only one who can actually give us life. This is what we reflect on during Lent, when many of us choose to go without something, so we can learn or remember that when we have Jesus we have everything that we need.
But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you. (2 Corinthians 4:7-12 ESV)
I'm praying that you will find your life in Him.
Blessings,
PD
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