Snowshoes
My wife and I had the opportunity to run away to a couple's retreat up in Northern Minnesota over the Valentine weekend.
While we were there we strapped on some snowshoes and flopped around like ducks over the deep snow.
We were just getting the hang of it when we ventured out onto the frozen lake.
Suddenly it was a different story. It was everything we could muster to keep from doing the splits, and it felt like we were polar bears on clumsy ice skates as we used muscles we've never used before in our legs....just to stay standing. Even then, staying still was a mistake.
We learned very quickly that we had to pick up our feet and not drag our heels. Putting a little bounce into our step, the bear-claw teeth on the underside of the snowshoes would bite down into the ice and grab, and we could literally jog across this frozen landscape almost in sync, stable and sure-footed. It was when we stopped, when we drug our heels, and when we took our eyes off the path in front of us that we floundered like drunken sailors.
The next morning we were reading in the bible about a few of the promises God makes, and what I found interesting was that they weren't promises for just anyone to take hold of. They weren't freebies, they were more like rewards.
In Matthew 28, Christ ends the book with the promise that He will be with us always, but only after He teaches us to go out and make disciples, to baptize and to teach them to obey all of His commands.
In Psalms 112 he says we're blessed. But it's not that we're all just mindlessly and anonymously blessed. It's the upright, the gracious, the compassionate, and the righteous man. It's the man who fears the Lord that finds great delight in His commands. We had a top-notch chef serving us 5-course meals, food and smells and tastes that literally kept us on the edge of our seats like giddy school children waiting for the next surprise. We understood exactly what it meant to delight at that point. So, when it comes to the teaching of Christ, in the commands and the law of the bible, we're supposed to approach them not begrudgingly or as if they are some sort of mundane chore, but with delight.
With our faith, our daily walk, it's really just like our adventure in those snowshoes. Faith can carry us over the deep snow and keep us floating almost magically on top of the dips and the crevices, but when it comes to the hard road, to the real tests, you can't just casually drag your heels in that same ho-hum manner, and just as importantly, you can't stand still, because you'll still fall down. You have to focus, use muscles that you may have never known you had, and you have to pick up your feet by putting a little bounce in your step. It's a step of faith, because it seems crazy to 'leap' just then, but it's then and only then, in that rhythm of a cadence, that you see the strength of what faith in Christ is really meant for. You discover the purpose for His love as those teeth, sharper and harder than any obstacle in your path, dig in and bite down.
Suddenly your moving right along, and the wind is in your face. You have a direction, you have a goal, and you're going to reach a place that at first seemed impossible given the conditions, because you're trusting in those shoes to take you there.
And there's the beauty of it all. Those promises that He will be with us always, those blessings, that strength and that delight, they become more than just words on a page. They are truly the teeth of our faith that carry us soundly through life.
