advent09 | wake up and run naked

I learned a lot about what Hope is. I marveled in this gift we have been given. Bu if I were to summarize the way I want to be different after this Hope week, what my practical purpose statement after examining the concept of Hope might be, here it is:

Wake up and run naked.

Yeah, this week has been life changing. Got that early morning brisk jog thing going on and...

Oh. Right. I was speaking in metaphoric terms.

So the first concept: wake up. All week long I keep running into the word "awake", or "wake up". The idea of hope involves waiting for a promise. And naturally, when you're waiting for something for a long time, it becomes natural to fall asleep...to lose focus, to believe there's something better to do with your time.

But that idea from Matthew 25 keeps returning to me: those who have hope work hard to stay awake, to be alert, to live expectantly.

And once we're awake, it's time to run. Run naked. According to Hebrews 12.1, anyway. It says this:

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up (other translations say "the sin that clings so closely"). And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.

The obvious image are the athletes of ancient Greece who didn't want a backback of snack bars and fitness water to weigh him down, or his loincloth coming undone and tripping him up. Yes. They ran naked.

And frankly, the thought of men running naked is not so pleasant. In fact, I feel similarly about that mental picture as I do of the one of men shaving their whole body and wearing Speedos. But then, these guys are competing. They're not trying to be cool, they're trying to win a race. And unless you're Michael Phelps, you're going to have a tough time doing both. They're focused and the smallest thing that might have the slightest chance of slowing them down has to be eliminated.

With sin, it's easy to see why that has to go: sin really does trip us up and keep us from doing all we could do. I was thinking of some recent conversations where I had made a statement that was met with a reply that was the equivalent of "you're an idiot". To which I wanted to say, "No, YOU'RE the idiot and here's WHY". I have to confess that sin got the best of me a couple of those times. But other times I just took it. And I have to say, the relationship I have with the person in those cases has changed for the better. I'm inclined to think my natural response would have hindered that. A small thing? Sure. But, this is a race and sometimes the little things make a difference.

The idea of "every weight that slows us down" is so much tougher to define. Sin is sin, but weights, encumbrances, differ from person to person. And what is not an encumbrance at one point in time, may be at another. But recent reading through the gospels, through the Corinthians, and especially in Hebrews 11 show that Christ-followers are called to travelling light.

Living simply, focused, is such a desire of mine. But I fail. I manage to spend a little less time on my appearance and then I go out buy more stuff. I think this one is a constant battle and perhaps part of the trick is not searching out these weights, but just to remove them as they appear. I don't know. I'm still working on this one. But I do know that, as the saints mentioned in Hebrews 11, I want to be one who is "seeking a homeland".

Part of what's hard about focused living is wondering how to balance. I'm all for running hard, but what about stopping to glory in the dirt at my feet or the bird song off to the left. I mean, gardening can take a bit of time for me, and it's kinda an outdoor church to me where I am taught and I worship (and it leads to community when harvest time comes!) -- but at what point can it become a weight that is making the race harder to run?

Maybe the answer, part of it any way, is in the word "endurance". Sprints are different than marathons (so I'm told, anyway) and if life were a sprint, maybe gardening would be a distraction, but as it is a marathon, gardening might be an important part of making it to the end. We can sprint in life for short periods, but people who make a lifestyle of it tend to crash.

I guess ultimately these are questions to bring to the Light. As are the specifics of staying awake and running without hindrance. Anyway, enough for now. Part of being able to be awake and run naked is to get enough sleep. Right?