It seems that every direction from my house is uphill. Hills that you never notice when you are driving a car are very evident to a person on foot. The community has recently built new, paved trails near our home. So I have some new places to run. The old road is still available and it now has a trail a long side of it. But with all the new trails, there are new possibilities.
Regardless of which route I take, I begin uphill. For the old route, the first 1/2 mile was nearly all uphill and for the new route, it is nearly a mile. As I drove along the trails recently to estimate distances and turnaround spots, it seemed that the trails were fairly level – that perhaps they had lowered some of the hills.
Then I ran the new trail for the first time – the hills are still there. None of them are steep – just long, slow inclines. I noticed something the other day. I was on one of those long inclines but had become lost in thought. My eyes were watching the trail in front of me. I actually wasn’t aware I was on the incline until I happened to raise my eyes to look for a landmark I knew should be near.
I was surprised twice – first by the realization that I was on a hill and secondly that I had gone as far as I had. The next time I ran, I tried my best to simply look at the trail in front of me and now at the length of the hill. As I took one stride at a time, it wasn’t long until I was over the top of the hill and the effort didn’t seem that great.
When I look ahead and see the length and grade of a hill, I get tired before I take the first step. It is as though I try to tackle the entire hill in my mind when I can only take one step at a time.
We all face imposing obstacles – tasks we think we cannot do; crises we think we cannot face; hills we think we cannot climb. While it may be important to know the size of the task, the impact of the crisis, or the size of the hill, we can’t tackle it all at once. We can only go a step at time.
When Jesus told the disciples to go and make disciples of all nations it must have seemed like an impossible task. The only way to tackle the job was one disciple at a time. It is the same today. (more…)
