On the Ride... Five Years and Counting...

My first Spiritual Director recently posted this time-lapsed video of her new hometown, Asheville, North Carolina.



When I watched it on my iPad, the music track didn't play, so I was forced to look at the video in silence.

The funkiness of technology apparently was an accident that was meant to happen. Without the distraction of music, I looked at this video and imagined that I was viewing the world through God's eyes.   Looking at this hyper-speed of creation in change made me reflect on the movement of time, and how time, as I think of it for God, happens in an instant whereas we see it crawling along month-by-month-by-month.

So, that means that this blog, born five years ago as a response to my "Wake Up Call," must have just happened in the last second in God's time!

I have changed, too, in five years, molded and shaped, as I have remained on the ride with God.  Many times, I have wanted to get off and go hide.  I have felt the river rapid accelerating the movement of this boat, and then slowing it down to a lazy drift.  I have looked longingly toward this river's tree-lined banks, and thought, "Maybe I can jump out of the boat and swim over there and hang out in the woods," only to realize that I am terrified of getting my head underwater, and so swimming to "safety" isn't an option.

Amazingly, for every time that I have thought about jumping ship, I haven't longed to go back to the place where this began.  Perhaps because I know that I can not.  Once inside the boat and on this river, I realized there is no ability to revisit the past and live there because there is no life there.  I simply have changed too much.

As I sat in church this past Sunday, I pulled out the hymnal and randomly let the page fall open.  It landed on a tune I didn't know with lyrics by Philip Doddridge and music by Handel.  Just like with the video, the tune wasn't as important or necessary as I read and contemplated the words:

Awake, my soul, stretch every nerve
and press with vigor on;
a heavenly race demands thy zeal,
and an immortal crown, and an immortal crown.

A cloud of witnesses around
hold thee in full survey;
forget the steps already trod,
onward urge thy way, and onward urge thy way.

'Tis God's all-animating voice
that calls thee from on high;
'tis his own hand presents thy prize
to thine aspiring eye, to thine aspiring eye.

Then wake, my soul, stretch every nerve,
and press with vigor on;
a heavenly race demands thy zeal,
and an immortal crown, and an immortal crown.

All aboard...and all hands on deck... and press with vigor on as this journey continues.  Slow and rough, smooth and swift; for God, this boat ride that has been five years for me is only the beginning.  The purpose is still being worked out as year succeeds to year.