For those that don’t know my morning wake up tendencies and routines, let me fill you in on what it looks like. Groan, roll over, snooze button, out cold. Repeat process every ten minutes for an hour. Been doing it for about 2 decades and I don’t see any signs of change on the way. Not this morning though. I was deep in a dream nowhere near the surface when my alarm pulled me into instant clear conciousness to a single crisply formed thought:
The race is over.
Wow.
And that was it, that was the moment, at 3:45 this morning, when the world race ended for me. There were see you laters, goodbyes (just see you laters with an #ff0000 end point at the moment), hugs, tears, and laughs still to come, but that moment was the finish of it all for me. I will miss it all, of course. I added it up at one point as we walked through an airport somewhere and discovered that all 27 of us plus our luggage weigh around 6000 lbs together. 3 tons. That’s 3 whole tons of Jesus setting prisoners free, feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, loving God’s children and singing praises to the King with every step. And I will miss every bit of family, adventure, pain and joy that delivering those 3 tons of Jesus to the nations came with.
But in that moment this morning, there was also peace. There was the ‘wow.’
There are no other words at this moment that I can put to it – all I can do is say ‘wow’ and sit in awe inspired reflective silence at the enormous beauty of what God has done this year. Looking at it in my minds eye, it’s not like a movie showing a scene at a time from my memory, but like a night sky in the desert where the stars surround you on every side until it seems you’ve been consumed by space itself. You’re just within it. All I can do is marvel at the beauty of it’s vastness as I lay in the very midst of every experience and emotion, allowing my spirit and not my mouth to thank God for it all, for this is not a place of words.
I’m in Florida for a few days now with some teammates. I have a wedding in Texas in three weeks to get to, followed by Chicago for a week because I’ve wanted to see Chicago for some time now, after which I will be home. Between here and Texas I’d like to get to Georgia, but really these three weeks are a random wondering, listening for God to guide my steps. I guess that’s all life really is though, if you don’t meddle with it too much – a wondering that becomes a pilgrimage to Zion; a series of random footfalls that, when looked back upon, create a path that only God could have planned and you realize that our random is His sovereignty, leading us steadily closer to that day we all must reach where we find our path ending in His waiting, open arms.
I aim to enjoy the journey. May it be wonderfully random.
