Several years ago I had a vision of myself running furiously forward. I was running and I hit this soft wall that enveloped my body. I kept running forward into a presence that had so captured me that I knew in that moment that all my life I would refuse to stop running into it. It had become the motivation of everything that I was and the only response that I could give to this great presence that surrounded me was to run and to run and to run head on into it.
When the love of God overtakes you, it doesn’t mean that you are suddenly incapable of hatred or blasphemy or greed. It does not leave you without choice. It’s an encounter that you must say yes to.
It’s an encounter that you must say yes to.
Again and again and again, step after step after step you choose to run in. You choose to face what you don’t understand and what you don’t know and you choose to trust that the love of God is good despite anything else.
As a person like any other, I have witnessed and experienced great highs and lows. I have seen grief and betrayal and pain and suffering. I have known laughter and rescue and redemption and healing. I have needed a savior. I have struggled with fear and not knowing who I am and being berated by a thousand tormenting voices screaming lies that who I am is not enough. I have walked through devastation and lifted my head to see hope.
In every one of these moments I have a choice to look at what I see or to look at what I know. I know a God who creates life. I know a God who takes the blank slate of blind eyes and fills it with color more beautiful than the mind could ever have imagined. I know a God who has surprised me and come through for me more times than I can count. I know a God who bends down to listen when I pray, even if at a whisper. I only have this history, this beautiful song that He sings over me that I hold in my heart because when He invited me to run I said yes.
I only have this history, this beautiful song that He sings over me that I hold in my heart because when He invited me to run I said yes.
Every moment that I glance to Him and the fraction of an ounce of my affection escapes and turns to worship in His ears, I have chosen to run in. I have chosen to say yes.
This is our journey. Step after step after step of saying yes and watching and experiencing as feeble and broken strides become a history of hope, monuments of faith that thrust us on and in. And we run for what is in front of us—a love that never fails, fades or quits—a love that takes a simple “yes” and turns it into testimony. My cry is not that we would never lose our breath or never stumble or never slow to a crawl. My cry is that we would always, always, and always choose to run in.
“Blessed is the man whose strength is in You, whose heart is set on pilgrimage. As they pass through the Valley of Weeping, they make it a spring. It will become a place of springs where pools of blessing and refreshment collect after it rains.” Psalm 84:5-6
– Katie