Snap By Snap

I've been thinking a lot about change.

Progress.

Development.

Growth.

Improvement.

Maybe it's because I'm working on the strategic plan for work and seeing how far we've come (and how far we have to go). Maybe it's because our strong willed daughter will be 19 tomorrow, and I'm so proud of how far she's come. Maybe I'm just weird and think about things like this.

The Journey is . . . the not-so-exact science of transforming a life, a job, or a family into what it God created it to be. And oddly enough, what keeps coming to my mind is the phrasing from one of Amy's Read Aloud Bible Story Books (highly recommended, by the way).


These particular books are written for preschool age children, and so they have a lot of repetition and simple wording. Instead of saying "The  pharisee was coming down the hill," the Good Samaritan story in Amy's book allows us to hear with the ears of the poor, beaten man . . .who's steps are coming? Will those steps lead someone here? Or will they go the other way?  Simple, right? When we speak to children we understand the need to reduce story to its most basic elements. At it's most basic, every journey is made of steps. But as adults, we see journeys as leaps. We fly here or there, we drive here or there; most of the time we think only of where we want to arrive, not how we will get there. We forget that all of our journeys, all of our progress has been made of steps.

Mark has a saying that I love. In parenting, he says, "You aim for 25."  It is a journey, and the steps are important. Take the steps that will bring you to the day when you are able to look at your 25 year old and know they'll make it in the world. Remember this when your 15 year old is rolling their eyes at your. Your goal is not a perfect teenager. Thank heavens, right? This saying helped me to value steps in the right direction over perfection in parenting.

We want perfection, but we can't have it. Instead we are given the journey.

Step, step, step, step.

When I was a teen, my youth group went on "wilderness trips" meant to help us on our spiritual journey. We backpacked, we canoed, we spent nights alone in the wild . . . and we ran. One trip we did a ten mile run.  I was pretty much a couch potato kind of kid (shocked, aren't you?), but I ran. I was 15. We were running out in the middle of nowhere on some road with beautiful mountains running alongside us. I remember looking at those mountains and thinking, praying, "If God can create those incredible mountans, He's strong enough to help me take one more step, and one more, and one more." I managed to keep moving faster than a walk all the way to the finish - - and I just about died. Something changed in me that day, though. In that very basic, physical test, God had shown me that he indeed could help me, and that I could accomplish with him so much more than I could alone. I still think of that run when I begin to be discouraged, or when I want perfection and instead I am given a long journey. He's still the God who made the mountains, and I'm still the couch potato counting on His strength when my steps falter.


Step, step, step, step.

There's a lot of contentment in the steps, if you are willing to see the meaning in them. When you start to see them add up, you see the substance they have. Seeing our daughter maturing, seeing our marriage deepen, seeing a workplace transforming - - all of these things are made of steps. Trusting or weak, faltering or striding - it is absolutely amazing to see what a step can become. I have so many more steps to take.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us throw off the sin that so easily entangles us, and run with endurance the race that God has set before us.  Hebrews 12:1