Running towards Acts 20:35

FINALLY I ran!  It was amazing, but not without some lessons & refocus from God beforehand :)

It has been quite a week, & will continue to be through Saturday at least (a 5k with my sister Christina, Elena cooking, & a bonfire). Crazy all over the place but awesome.  I had all intentions of running Monday, & once I arrived at work had the pleasant surprise of an old friend ask to start running with me.

Yayness!  Nobody ever wants to run with me. I've only had 2 people who liked to, J-Dawg (who got me into working out & my health) & Jacob (who got me into trail running).  I guess I scare people off...and it sucks but is something I've learned to deal with.  So to have J-Dawg's wife ask me to run with her totally made my day. Hopefully this will end up working out.

Well, my plan to run got cancelled literally on the way to the trail when I realized...my mom was still at the mechanic with my car. I had no idea what was wrong with it, how much it would be, or if she'd need a ride home & if I ran on the trail I wouldn't have my phone with me. So begrudgingly I passed my turn for the trail & headed to the gym.  Thinking that my hunger for time with God, for His message to me, would just have to wait...but He surprised me with a message when I arrived at the gym.

Life isn't about what I can get but what I can give. I will gain so much more joy & passion from helping a friend get back into running than on any of my longest trail runs. So much more love by just having my mother know I am only a phone call away.  As much as I enjoy my quiet time with God on the trail, isn't life really about the sacrifices you make for those you love?  And how many people sacrifice for me everyday & I never take notice... 

Alongside that, isn't that what marriage is supposed to be about. Not sacrificing all of yourself for the other person, but loving them enough that you are both willing to.  It's that deep love that drives us forward, creates passion, creates art. If sacrifice is so painful why do we desire, I desire, to find that person I am willing to give up everything for?

It's what Christ demonstrated for us, & what God the Father shows us everyday.  He DID give His all for us, & we spend our lives giving our all back to Him, loving Him with our best & worst.

And God did give me our run together, after I stopped focusing on myself, stopped looking at what love I wanted & needed, & looked at how I could love others.  With the most beautiful weather yesterday, I finally got my long trail run back.  The wind gently embracing my cheeks, the colors of fall painted all around me.  Just knowing He was there each step forward; the gravel beside me lifting up their voices in praise & love for Him, My Lord!

Golden leaves attached to the one TRUE vine

*Originally written on October 11th, 2010*

In an earlier post I discussed a poem by Robert Frost, Nothing Gold Can Stay:

Nothing Gold Can Stay
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leafs a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

I pondered the meaning God had for me in this and a revelation finally came, at least my interpretation for it.  I didn't get to run this past Saturday, so when I had to take off work early a tink and didn't have to meet up with Maxwell (my workout buddy), with the weather being so beautiful, I decided to go out for a run on the trail.  Many things crossed my mind, many thoughts I had to run from, and then I started thinking on a subject that has been on my mind since the autumn season came upon us...the beauty of death.  Think about it, its really what this season is truly about, the glory of death.  All the magnificent changes in colors-the gold, crimson, and browns of the trees, as their leaves slowly die and fall. And during this season of death, seeds of new life fall to the ground.  Then its followed by a dormant season or mourning, through winter, where everything, all the many colors are all  covered in a blanket of white snow.  This season of rest prepares the seeds that fell, the new life, for their glorious debut in Spring!  Without the fall or winter seasons, there would be no life in the spring or summer!

Now your probably wondering how this matches up with the poem I started with.

Well Nature's first green is gold. Think of the beginning of fall, what is the first color the leaves turn?  Gold. It's the hardest hue to hold because it soon turns to red and then brown before its death is final and falls to the ground. Her early leaf's a flower, but only so an hour has to do with the flowers that come in the spring from the fall season...but this season is soon turned into summer and then returns to fall, the season of death yet again.

But to me, there is a much deeper meaning behind this poem.
the life of Jesus Christ our Lord

Christ symbolizes nature's first true perfect  gold when He was born through the virgin Mary into this world. This hue was hard to hold through His short life &  ministry of only 3 years, from the age of 30-33. Then His leaf color changed into the awesome deep reds through the stripes on His back that He took for us & the shedding of His innocent blood, He turns to the last color of the fall season as He hangs on the cross, & finally the finale of autumn as He symbolically falls from the tree, the cross, and His physical body is placed in a tomb.  He enters winter...

...through His winter He covers ALL THE WORLD with THE brilliancy of white, covering over our  sins as he conquers death and hell and is resurrected as the first flower of the spring, the early leaf became a flower.  He returns to the world as the one true vine, & we can now all become grafted in.  For Christ is the vine, the Heavenly Father is the gardener, who prunes us, the branches and new leaves of spring and summer.  This season of spring, Eden in the poem, is only temporary for sin enters our lives and hearts, and the dawn of our lives is turned into day where we each reflect His glorious light, continually being pruned by the Father, as we await the time when we to shall enter our own autumn and begin the journey into the new birth of spring through the death of Christ. As we are perfect in Him, we cannot stay in this world, for we will become gold also...and nothing gold can stay.