Running Uphill

Training for Today: Run 3.5 Miles

Devotion: Running Uphill

My typical running route ends with a climb. It’s not an incredibly difficult hill, but it’s there. And, by the end of a long run, it’s almost as if my legs can feel it coming. Ugh, ugh, and up we go. What amazes me is that the final climb of my runs somehow manages to feel like it takes forever, like I’m running in slow motion. (For those of you who’ve seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail, it’s like the knight who repeatedly runs toward the castle but never quite makes it!) While working my way up the hill, my mind fills with thoughts like, “Just imagine when you’ve made it up the hill . . . that will feel so great!”, “Can’t you feel the ice cold water refreshing your whole body as you drink it?”, and, “How great it will be to take a shower!” It’s as though my craving for the future gets me through the present.


At the end of my last run, I realized how much that uphill climb has in common with a time of grief. We feel like our grief will never end. We feel as though life is moving in slow motion. We long for the day when our mourning is over, when we feel a sense of normalcy again. We want to rinse off the trials of the past and experience a future of refreshment and renewal.

In the greatness of our amazing God, we have the hope of heaven at the end of our run on earth. Jesus, our Living Water, quenches your thirst and renews your soul day by day. He gave His life for you. He conquered the grave. He waits for you in heaven at the end of your climb! And, our craving for that future keeps us connected to Christ and gets us through the present. As Jesus said to the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4:10-14,

“‘If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.’ ‘Sir,’ the woman said, ‘you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?’ Jesus answered, ‘Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’”

Praise the Lord! Drink deeply, everyone!

Prayer
Dear Living Water, I praise and thank you for the refreshment and renewal that you provide for me everyday. How I long to be with you in heaven! While I am here, guide my footsteps and wash over me with your grace and mercy. Amen.