Running blind.
Photo source: Mike Warren
Have you ever tried to run with your eyes closed? I tried that today on my run, its really hard, if not impossible for me to run more than 10 steps without my eyes opening of their own accord. Even though it was along a straight path I couldn’t do it for more than 10 steps. I was really scared that I was going to hit something, to trip over something or stray onto the road and get hit by a car.
And as I was thinking about this during the rest of my run, I wondered if our faith in God sometimes seems that way. Like we are asked to run blind, “have faith”, “trust in God”, and somehow carry on believing and living out our life without “seeing” our God or the path that we are to run clearly. How sometimes when I pray it just seems like I’m thinking/saying these words… How when I sing these worship songs I’m actually trying to just sing well because I like the sound of my own voice. Sometimes it feels that way. And sometimes it seems that I scramble to open my physical eyes to “see” the path that I am running on, trying to make sense of this God and this faith that I have through the circumstances that happen around me, trying to avoid tripping up in my faith, trying not too stray too far from ‘the path’ and get run over by some evil things in this world.
But I don’t think that is true. We should not feel like we are running blind. And trying to avoid sinning is not the way to run the race that we are on to victory. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that you don’t have to be disciplined or that you don’t have to work to break bad habit and form godly ones, its just that I think that sometimes we miss the point. I know that I do, I focus on trying to not sin but end up thinking about it so much that I build up a huge amount of tension and sin anyway. and I confuse myself with the things that I think I should be doing with the things that God has told me to do. They might be good things, but as someone has said “good is the enemy of best.” But I stray from my point – which is that we focus on the wrong thing sometimes.
When I was running with my eyes closed I couldn’t stop the thought going through my mind: ‘oh crap, I can’t see, what if I fall over, what if I hit something, what if I get run over…. oh crap…’ And I think that a similar thought runs through my mind when I am not focused on God and on listening to the Holy Spirit and on knowing what the word says – but when I’m feeling like I can’t see where I’m going its because I’m focused on that very thing. That I don’t know where I am going. And so I scramble to make plans, and to get myself involved in Church things and… get busy. And I lose sight of God and all the good things that he has done and will continue to do in my life.
Do I have to know where exactly I’m going? No, but it would be nice… I guess I’ll have to trust God that he has good plans for me (Jeremiah 29:11), that he’ll continue the good stuff he has started to form in me (Philippians 1:6), and that everything is under control. I’ll just have to keep on running, turning my eyes upon Jesus as that wonderful old hymn says, because then the things of this world will grow strangely dim, in the light of His glory and grace.
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