My Heart's in the Highlands: Silver Threads

The following is a message of encouragement to anyone passionately pursuing Christ who find themselves tired and weary because of the trials or afflictions.

Please be encouraged!

Silver Threads

It was the last week of freshman year and extra time was popping up all over my daily schedule. As the "rat race" of college life began to slow, I resolved to take time for a 3 mile run.

The evening was perfect. As I set out, I noticed the sun was slowly sinking to my left while stretching it's golden fingers over the fields, trees, and houses. The sky was brilliant as well. Small puffy clouds like lambs wandered in a field of blue sky. The rays of the sun kissed their puffy faces causing them to blush with a coral pink. My dad always said "running heightens all of your senses" and tonight I felt that he could not be more right. I settled into a easy pace to enjoy God's awesome handiwork.

Turing my first corner, the sun was now on my back. I watched my shadow stretch out before me while I ran. The path was busier now. Other runners and cyclists passed as I hastened on toward my goal. Each face told a different story. I wondered who they were, where they had come from, and where they were going. A small pain was growing in my side, but forcing my stomach out with each breath stayed off the pain for a bit longer. I was alone again on the path when I realized that up ahead was my third corner.

The sun splashed itself on my right side now. The soccer fields to my right reminded me of my past. So many years ago I had played on a field just like that one. As I pounded out each stride on the pavement, I wondered at God's amazing grace in my life. While I had chosen my steps, all along He had directed my path. I snapped out my pensive mood for a moment as I approached a street. As I shot a glace left over my shoulder I saw no cars, then I looked left. I kept my eyes low, for while the sun light made the world dance in the brilliant colors of twilight, looking into the sun is always painful. A white ford had pulled to a stop and allowed me to cross the street. With a wave and a smile, I picked up my pace across the street, all the while blinking my eyes in an attempt to remove the spots the sun had left in my vision. Looking ahead, I saw my final corner.

I forced myself to keep pace for I knew sprinting now would kill my pace in the end. Finally, I turned the corner. Instantly, I knew this part of the run was different. The sun was now right in front of me. It's brilliant fiery light was all that I could see for a few moments. Dropping my chin down and squinting my eyes, I pushed on despite the bright light. My face wrinkled like a prune. My shoulders began to tighten together causing my breathing to become more labored. Shafts of sunlight shot through gaps in the trees like flaming arrows toward my face. If there is one thing I hate about running, it's running into the sunlight. This was the only way to the finish line -- couldn't quit now.

In an attempt to distract myself, I began again looking around me at God's beautiful creation. Back and forth, my eyes scanned the trees on the bike path, the brick library, the houses, and the runners on the other side of the street-- the ones with the sun at their back. A small part of me began to envy them. They didn't have to deal with the extra stress of sun in their faces. I pulled my envious gaze away and pushed on. That's when I saw it. Blinking twice, I looked again to make sure what I has seen wasn't a product of my overactive imagination. Down on the grass beside me, a nearly invisible silver thread was stretched criss-cross between the blades of grass. The sunlight had caught the edge of a spiders silken thread stretched between the grass that other wise might have been invisible if the sun hadn't illuminated them. I stared at them while I ran for about one hundred feet. The threads seemed endless. Back and forth they ran weft to the warp finger blades of grass. Across the lawn they wove themselves into a thin blanket of silver light.

My thoughts turned to my Father to make sense of this small lesson. Running toward the sun is hard. Physically and mentally, it's harder than running with the sun to your back. Looking at other runners who have the "easy" path on the other side of the road in the shade causes us to wonder if it's even worth the it. Sometimes it would just be easier to take a different route, one with less pain. The only trouble was tonight, that wasn't an option. The finish line was toward the sun, and that was the only way I could go.

Similarly, running toward the Son is hard sometimes to. Spiritually and emotionally, we want to believe that it would be easier to run with the Son to our backs. And sometimes it would just be easier to take a different route, one with less pain. We look at others around us on the "easy path" they are running and wonder if the one we are on is worth all the pain. Sometimes we even question if running toward the Son is truly the "best" path or if taking a different one would be better. The trouble is, that's not an option. The finish line is toward the Son, and it's the only way we can go.

Then there are the spider webs in the grass, those silver threads that would be invisible if I were going any other direction than toward the sun, which reminded me that even through the Christian race is hard and at times painful, God is still sovereign and if we were running in any direction other than toward the Son, there are blessings we would never see. God is not a God far off. He see's our toils, our sufferings, our burdens, our cares, and grants us small blessings or gifts of encouragements as if to say, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."

Sun light that had before been a torture before, now warmed my face as I pondered this lesson from my Father. The rest of the run, though it was into the sun's light, was precious to me because of the Silver Threads and the sufficient strength of my Savior.

* * *

Friends, be encouraged! Even Paul struggled in his service for God. In his affliction he prayed, "Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly in my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weakness, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong" (2 Corinthians 12:8-10).

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which so clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God" (Hebrews 12:1-2).