GIVE OF YOURSELF

My son runs with his school’s cross country team and a few weeks back had a large regional meet at one of our local parks. Being on our home turf I was asked along with a few other parents to help staff the event, my job was to monitor a rather confusing piece of course to make sure the runners stayed on the path.

The age divisions started in succession and the elite runners took to the course on that sweltering summer day and fought themselves and one another for personal bests, team wins and medals. Then came the mid-tier runners, fighting to push through the course. I watched and guided from my spot, I cheered on and encouraged each runner as they passed me. Soon though the race became like a trickle, the stragglers came. The slower ones arrived, the ones who struggled, whose stamina wasn’t as developed, the ones whose minds told them that this was too hard, this was too painful.

And then came the slowest of the slow, the plodders who rounded the bend walking, clutching their forehead or drudging slowly with hands on their hips, red faced with defeat sewn onto their furrowed brows. There were no cheering supporters for these children, no enthusiastic teammates, coaches, or friends… this wasn’t the limelight of the race. Everyone was at the finish line cheering on the winners. These young men and women struggled and sometimes crying shambled through this course alone with nothing more than a closing pace vehicle rumbling on quietly behind them.

As these groups passed me these words came into my heart and ran deep through my mind:

“Give. Give the good of yourself. Encourage, rejoice and cheer on. Give, give the good of yourself.” I realized my place in this moment, I was there to encourage and to cheer those young men and women who were at the very last threads of their endurance.

So, I ran to the lonely stragglers and I cheered, I encouraged, I told them that I was proud of them, they had come so far and had worked too hard to give up now.

I asked their names and I ran alongside the slowest of the slow and I used all the breath in my lungs and then some. And I cheered for them and danced wildly like a madman when they crossed their finish lines. And my throat became raw and my voice cracked.

And when one straggler was done with their race, I ran back to that spot I originally stood at and waited for the next race to start and I waited for the new stragglers to arrive. And again, I cheered and yelled and ran alongside as many children that day that I could.

And quite a few times during that day as I encouraged, I would see the light spark in their eyes and their legs would gain fresh strength and a second wind would move through their lungs and they would run. All because some stranger told them they weren’t alone and that they could do it. A young runner found me at the end of the meet and gave me a hug and thanked me for encouraging them to persevere.

I was once that straggler at the back end of my races, struggling and giving up where there was no one around to encourage me and I so many times have felt forgotten as those so able and quick held their medals and people praised and cheered them on. I understand pain very well. I grew up in pain and He used pain to mold my heart with empathy. The Maker of All Good Things reminded me of where I came from and to those I am called to. In fact, He reminds us all that we are called to be givers of life, encouragers and those who are to cheer on the weary, the broken and the stragglers. Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way, you will fulfill the law of Christ. - Galatians 6:2

He isn’t a God of the exceptional and the talented. He isn’t the God of the handsome or beautiful or the fleet footed. He is the God of the ordinary and the crushed, the weary and broken. If you look out across this country you’ll see the exceptional praised but if you look deeply enough you will see the lonely stragglers. If you look out across this country you will see the forgotten on the street corners begging for bread or entirely given up, strung out along the road. They are the stragglers who have fallen through the cracks of a rough society.

If you look out across the divides of the wealthy and powerful and the valleys where men live amongst one another you will see the weak and the fearful, jumped upon, shackled and rag dolled to the ground by stronger and heavily backed powers. These are the weak and the despised and the broken, the stragglers vilified and told that they don’t even bear witness in any race here.

Even among our own, we have those who fall behind in their own races, those who silently struggle with their own demons or those who are bereft because of wrong theology that places burdens on weak backs. Or those stragglers who like myself still feel grief deeply and who feel often like a stranger even among their own spiritual kin.

These are the ones we as His body, His hands and His feet need to be caring for. These are the ones who need to know that they aren’t forgotten or are alone while they trudge through a dried grassy path on a sweltering summer’s day.

I sat down later that day with these words echoing throughout my mind, I felt His unction and spirit through my pen, “Give. Give the good of yourself.” I began to write and these are the words that came tumbling out as if they had been bottled up for a time:

“Give. Give the good of yourself

Found through Christ Jesus.

Encourage, rejoice and cheer on.

Give your everything and then some.

Walk through the valley with the slow and the lame.

And give of yourself even when you are slandered by the double tongued.

Give when it is convenient and even more when it is inconvenient.

Give life and seek to bind up wounds and be humble and meek and not seeking war.

Give of yourself as fully as He has given Himself to you.”

Go out today and give, not because it’s a burden or something to check off your to do list, but because you have been tasked by this when Jesus gave us this commandment:

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. - John 13:34

A hard and cold place is the valley of men, it needs those whose hearts are tender and whose ears are attuned to the pain of others. Don’t go out as blind and belligerent men would tell you, they would say go to the exceptional and the approved. They would place burdens on weary hearts and exact their prices over them. No. Do not be like them. They have already received their prize on this earth and it will be accounted to them in wrath on that final day.

But be humble, be ever meek and love the unlovely, the stragglers, the discontented, the abused and crushed. Those vilified and beaten and waylaid because of prejudice. The holy prophets called out against these things and you are called to the same righteousness. Be the healing balm that someone, not like you, someone who is on their last legs and cursed by men, be the balm that they so desperately need today. Show Christ through your mercy, and sate the hunger of the empty in belly and soul, and in so doing you will satisfy the fullness of the law and the prophets, To love your neighbor as you would love yourself. – Matthew 22:39-40

Give in these hard days when men say to take and to hoard. Give when they say to close doors. Give of yourself and one day you will hear those words you so long to hear from Him, “Well done good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your Lord.”