Where to look

It seems like lately everywhere I look is a metaphor for being stuck. I'm driving the other day and a bird is flying suspended in one place in mid-air. The wind was blowing so hard against him that he looked like he couldn't move forward at all.

Stuck.

Then last night John and I are in an appointment and the clock was stopped, but not dead....you know where the second hand just ticks in place again and again and never moves forward.

Stuck.

And that's how I've felt in my life lately, just stuck. In the same old stuff, only with a worse attitude. Stuck in the same patterns, and cycles. Cause let's face it, sometimes life's junk is super sticky.

So I'm on my run this morning, and the winds are terrible. I came home and looked up the weather and it said 15-20 mph winds, and there I am running in them. And I feel just like that bird when the wind is at my face, s t u c k. Running my butt off and going no where. Well here I come on the trail and round a corner and just as the song comes on my Pandora with the words about looking to the cross I see a field of little crosses (literally) with the sun rising behind them. We live by a nursery, so they apparently use these devices to grow something on in the spring, but here they are, plain as can be-crosses with the sun rising behind them. I stop, dumbfounded at the reality of the timing and stare...and then take a picture (see above) so I can tell people and remember. And continue on my run.

As I continue to run it dawns on me that I've never seen them before and I loop back on the trail to scope out why. When I get closer to the crosses it dawns on me that on the exact opposite side of the trail is a snake. The people that live there have a decoy snake in their garden to ward off bunnies, or whatever, and it looks real. Seriously scares me. Everytime I come around this bend in the trail I'm so focused on the snake, and how much it freaks me out that I never even noticed the other side. And that's when I start thinking about my life.

You see, I always have a choice where I look. To the cross, or to the snake. It's inevitable, as long as I'm alive on this earth they will both be there, but I have the choice to look at one and turn from the other. I have a choice to look away from the shame, guilt, temptation and condemnation. And look toward the hope, victory, triumph and truth. To look away from the defeat, and toward the promise. To look away from the temporary and look toward the eternal. As a believer in that cross, it's power is completely available to me. The power that my sin is dead, the power that my Savior is available and able. The power that turned away pointed fingers and instead opened arms. But there is also one who seeks to destroy me. To take me feet right out from under me, and I feel the struggle. But the struggle is not mine, it's for one stronger than me. And it will end well.

So today, despite the 20 mph winds, and the snake, and the stuck, I will run. Looking to the cross. With the wind in my face, and the snake right next to me, I will look. To the triumph. To the empty cross, that means a Savior is in heaven sitting, work completed. To the victory, that is mine. And I won't turn back.

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart."
Hebrew 12:1-3