Don’t run!

She said, “I can’t take this any more. I have to get out of here.” It doesn’t matter who she was. What matters is that every one of us, at some point in our life, have felt like her. Desiring to run, to flee the pressure, the hurt, the disappointment, the over flowing circumstances of our life, we see no hope and no resolution for our discouragement. So the great escape is all we can muster.

Holding this conclusion in our heart, we’ll often reconsider after a while. We’ll look at the ones we love, the work we do, the connections we have with God, institutions and others and we’ll stop. We wont run, although it still plays in our psyche. What we do is weigh the options in a more rational way. We’ll plead with God. We’ll measure the impact of flight on our families, work and other relationships. We’ll reevaluate the pressures to see if they are really that bad. We might even seek counsel with someone we trust, in order to have a more “unbiased” perspective. But none of these things remove the stress of life.

The problem here is, no matter what someone has told you, life is a never ending collection of stresses. Think about this, every human that is alive has blood pressure. That’s right, to breath, walk, eat, laugh, cry, love and enjoy the mix, we all are under pressure (self-inflicted, from the heart). Then you throw in the outside influences in our lives and it is obvious we are all on a treadmill of varying levels of tension. These are not all bad. Some are downright awesome. But they are tensions.

No one becomes an athlete of any level without stressing their body. You will never see a couch trained athlete at the Olympics (or should I have said, “summer games” to not have the fear of trademark infringement?). You will never see a YouTube video trained pilot flying for a major airline (at least I hope not, although I understand that simulators are so good now, that many pilots can go from the simulator to the cockpit). Would you allow your surgeon to perform major surgery on you with a certificate of training completed through an online surgery school? Every serious pursuit costs and the process to attain is never without some form of tension, agony, trauma or hassle.

Life, therefore, as a serious pursuit, is not without hardship.

You may not believe me, but that goes for the Christian life also.

I know the preacher told you that if you just accepted Jesus into your life that you would be a new creation, the old things would pass away and new things would come. And they do. But the world and its penchant for pressurizing all that is within it, does what it has been forced to do since the fall. It carries on in lack of its own resolution with pains and sufferings and disappointment. Just like Romans 8:19-22 says.

“For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.” NASB

I don’t know if there is any experience more pressurized, than the experience of a woman, becoming a mother through the act of childbirth. She said, “I can’t take this any more. I have to get out of here.” I get it. I’ve seen it. Those lovely troopers, in the midst of the most wonderful miracle of birth, come to a place where the pressure is too much and they would flee. But they can’t.

I suppose that is a microcosm of our lives on the earth. We will struggle, with hopes and dreams and desires for a smiling future, as we slog through the mire of a world that is longing for a Savior. One who would rid us of this God awful world of pain, stress and disappointment. One who is able to give us a hope for today and tomorrow. One who is enough to help us face the flight and make us able to stand. One, who like the transformation of the mother’s pain to the mother’s joy at seeing her child, gives us the future even through the challenge of each day. One, about whom Paul attests, that is able and willing to give us something with which nothing can be compared. “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” NASB

So, don’t give up.

Hang in there.

Don’t run.

Give God a chance to do what only He can do, even though it may be hard.