Differently

 I love to run in the woods.  Because when I run, I think differently, I pray differently, I listen differently, I untangle knots differently, and I respond differently.  I try to run a slightly varied route each day, so it does not become a stale routine, and so that God draws my attention to Himself.  And sometimes I run somewhere completely new.

The most fruitful way from one point to another is rarely the straight and familiar line, head down slogging along, but running with eyes wide open because of what we can see and hear and sense and come to know.  There are often times when looking up, I see the wonders of the wild, the flight of an owl, the swooping of a hawk, or staggered by the intricate black lace of countless trees etched across a blue satin sky.  And still, there is so much that I miss of His glory because I am not even looking.

How we choose to run our path today --influences what we see planted and nurtured and growing along the way.  What has changed.  What has grown since.  Or sometimes observing what is pointblank in front of us, "I never noticed that other trail before,"  that enormous sycamore tree, those wildflowers just beginning to bloom.  It is not just something old and something new, but seeing differently.

What is a different way through this hard situation or amidst difficult relationships?  How do I approach this differently because I am a believer and "It is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me." (Galatians 2. 20)?

What has God placed before me today?  A new road or a new way may surprisingly appear in what I have only considered as the familiar or the ordinary. But we waste a lot of time looking for new doors, or exit signs, or being distracted by the ancient delusion of "if only I were only someplace else!"  

It is not the path itself, but how we run it differently -- how we view more closely and tread and experience the path we are already on, right where we are.  Almost always when I am running the trails around me, even those I know so well, I see something I've never seen before.  Or grasp something I've not thought --or prayed -- about before.  Or a passage or verse of Scripture comes to mind, hauntingly particular to what I am thinking about, what I am worrying about, what is the first step to take or the next, and to "trust Me in this."

How we see God differently affects how we see others differently, which influences how we see ourselves differently, which totally changes how we view circumstances differently.  And all those impact what we see, what we do, and how we respond to His leading....differently. 

 

Behold, I am doing a new thing;

now it springs forth,

do you not perceive it?

I will make a way in the wilderness

and rivers in the desert.

                Isaiah 43. 19 

 

See you later.  I'm going for a run.