Cybercolumn by Berry D. Simpson: Find a way_22105

Posted: 2/18/05

CYBER COLUMN:
Find a way

By Berry D. Simpson

C. S. Lewis wrote: “We often say, ‘I never expected to be a saint; I only wanted to be a decent, ordinary chap,’ and imagine when we say this we are being humble. Of course, we never wanted, and never asked, to be made into the sort of creatures (God) is going to make us into; the question is not what we intended ourselves to be, but what he intended us to be when he made us. We may be content to remain what we call ‘ordinary people,’ but he is determined to carry out a quite different plan.”

God uses a wide variety of methods to carry out his plans. For me, God works me over when I run. I believe he gives me dreams of training better and longer and faster, dreams of running another marathon (or even further), so he can use that training process to mold me into his image. However, I don’t think he really cares that much how well I run. I think he cares more that I learn patience and dependability and courage than whether I can run 20 miles at a stretch or lower my times for quarter-mile repeats at the track. He wants me to be like him, and he’ll use running and backpacking, reading and journal-keeping (or as in Cyndi’s case, dancing and performing and generally living on the edge), as tools in his hands to carry out his intentions. When I look back over my life, I can see how God has done exactly all that. I’ve learned deep lessons and felt surprising changes in my heart as a result of running day after day in the cold rain or blowing sand or 100-degree heat.

However, I’m aware that if you happen to see me out plodding down the street with a grimace on my face and a hitch in my gait and sweaty clothes stuck to my skin, I doubt you’ll think, “There goes a man who is communing with God.” It’s more likely you’ll think, like one of Cyndi’s friends who once saw me running slowly past her house one hot summer day and said to her husband, “Somebody needs to go help that poor man.”

I’ve had friends who were inspired to go out running after reading one of my journals, but the run wasn’t a pleasant experience. Instead of hearing the voice of God all they heard was their own voice saying, “This is stupid; it hurts; you should go back home and lay down.”

I know all about that voice. I hear it all the time. I certainly didn’t have spiritual communion in mind when I first started. It was in 1978 when I went for my first run down Sanger Street in Hobbs, N.M., wearing cutoffs and tennis shoes. I wasn’t trying to connect with God; I was just trying to impress a girl. We’d dated over the Christmas holidays, and now that I was home for the summer, I was hoping to go out with her some more, only I discovered that while I was away at college she had been dating a track-and-field jock, a javelin thrower from back east. I decided I had to do something physical to win her back. I started running, and within a couple of weeks, she was mine again (and still is, 27 years later).

I was smart enough to know it wasn’t running that made her take me back. I wasn’t an impressive athlete even back then at 22 years of age. But by the time I figured all that out, I was accustomed to the solitude of running and the mental relaxation that comes from repetitive motion. I was hooked.

I’ll admit, I often worry that I write too much about running. I’m not trying to convert anyone to running; however, I am trying to encourage everyone to find something in your life, something you can do on a regular basis, something that brings you closer to God, something that lets you hear his voice. For most people, it will be something other than running, probably something that doesn’t hurt. I like to hear all the different ways people find to commune with God. I have a friend to talks to God every morning while he takes a shower. Not a bad way, is it?

The thing is, it isn’t easy to stay in touch with God. We have to overcome our selfish human nature and Satan’s temptations. Robert Pirsig wrote, “It takes a lot of effort to get to the high country of the mind, and even more effort to stay there once you’ve arrived, but it’s worth it. Unless you make the effort, you’ll remain in the same valley of thought your whole life.”

He wasn’t thinking about Christian spirituality when he wrote that, but the principle is true. It takes effort to commune with God, and even more effort to stay with it once you’ve found him . But it’s worth it.

Berry Simpson, a Sunday School teacher at First Baptist Church in Midland, is a petroleum engineer, writer, runner and member of the city council in Midland.