why did the cricket cross the road?

with yesterday’s entry, i had posted more in one month (and consecutively, to boot) than i had in all of either 2009 or 2010. with today’s entry, i have posted more in 2011 than in both previous years combined!

it is no longer i who live, but Christ who lives in me. so i live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. (galatians 2:20)

it’s pretty amazing what can happen when you are [finally] fully assured of your calling and step out in obedience. that’s not to say that i will never face writer’s block or get bogged down by my busy schedule, but i have been absolutely blown away by how easily the past 12 days have come. after all my stops and starts in the past, it feels good to have found some sure-footing with my writing.

it reminds me of the cricket we saw yesterday on our run (apparently sundays are going to be ‘lessons learned from bugs’ :) we were on a paved road with pretty large aggregate. this cricket started hopping across in front of us, but because the road was so bumpy, every time he landed he had to resituate and get his legs back under him before he could jump again. i immediately got this picture of us going through life.

john 16:33 tells us that “here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows.” you will inevitably face bumps in the road. the question is, what will you do with them? if that cricket had given up after stumbling a few times, he never would have made it to the other side of the road. in the same way, we can’t give up when bumps in the road cause us to lose our footing. we have to get back up, realign ourselves with God’s direction for our life, and keep going. there’s a beautiful grassy field of promise waiting just for us. bumps can either get in our way, or they can serve as launching pads to take us to the next place.

what if i had given up after any one of my writing setbacks? ‘oh, i obviously can’t stick with it, so why bother trying?’ i bother trying because staying in the middle of the road means baking in the hot sun or getting run over by a truck. if the israelites had never crossed over into the promised land, they would have continued wandering in the desert like after the first time they were supposed to cross over, or they would have been washed away with the torrent of water by staying stuck in the middle of the jordan.

i don’t know about you, but none of those options sound very appealing to me.

God’s promise of entering His rest still stands, so we ought to tremble with fear that some of you might fail to experience it ... so let us do our best to enter that rest. but if we disobey God, as the people of israel did, we will fall. (hebrews 4:1 & 11)

your rest is waiting. keep jumping.