To Run is Christ; To Die is Gain
In the past couple of weeks, there has been a lot of discussion about safety while running. A woman, thirty-four, goes out for a run one morning, but never comes home. A woman, a wife, a mother of two, a teacher, a runner, out to exercise her body in the time that she could find to do so, and she never returns home. So many communities are affected by one selfish act, and we all mourn the loss in one way or another.
I have run outside one time since then. The more the days pass, the more stories I read, the more memories I have tried to push out of my head that have resurfaced of times when I have been out for a run and I have been yelled at or honked at, made to feel uncomfortable doing something to better myself.
I don’t know how long it will take me before I feel safe enough to go outside and run. I don’t know what it will look like - definitely not my best effort - because I will be on alert. I will be hyper aware of my surroundings, careful to stay near places where my cries will be heard, where my GPS will be strong enough to find me should I find myself taken.
Growing up, I approached God and faith in the same way. All of my days were clouded with warning messages of coming fire and brimstone because “we’re living in the last days” and “no man knows the day or the hour” and rapture drills (If you want to know what a rapture drill is, that’s a story for another time).
I spent my whole childhood terrified to live because I was afraid of being left behind. My first remembered panic attack was when I was nine-years-old: We were having a movie night at church in lieu of a Sunday evening service. We were watching the Kirk Cameron Left Behind movie. I started feeling this small tickle at the base of my neck. Then that tickle turned to ice. The ice climbed up my neck. From my neck, it spread to the sides of my head. My thoughts froze. My breathing started to get shallow. I felt I was suffocating. I thought there was something terribly wrong with me. I thought I needed to go to the hospital. I ran out of the sanctuary as quickly as I could without raising a concern, but I was followed by a couple church leaders.
There was this small room off to the side of the sanctuary, and I sat on a worn white couch, feeling the world continuing to close in around me. The leaders started trying to sort through my feelings, and they thought I was afraid for my salvation. Maybe I was.
Maybe I was afraid of being left behind. Maybe I was afraid one day I’d stand in the middle of the eave of the church on my knees wondering where I went wrong, why I didn’t make the rapture list, what I could do, if I had another chance?
From this day, I lived more and more in fear of the rapture. Any time I even heard the word “Revelation”, “rapture”, or “last days”, I cowered in fear, hiding from everyone and everything. I thought, “My God. What is wrong with me? I’ve prayed. I believe in God. I believe in Jesus. Why can I not stop hiding? Why can I not stop being afraid?” And to this day, I still feel my neck run cold when it’s brought up, but I’ve learned how to challenge the fear by reminding myself of the Gospel: Jesus, the Son of God, came and dwelled with us. He lived a perfect life. He took on the sin punishment we deserved (the wages of sin is death), died on a cross, and then rose again three days later having defeated death, hell, and the grave, his blood shed covering the sins of the past, the present, and the future, once and for all.
How does this translate to being afraid to run outside, though?
When we’re afraid of danger or God’s judgment to the point that we’re locking ourselves inside trying to prevent anything bad from happening, we’re living in self-preservation. We weren’t called to live in hiding.
I can think of so many examples in scripture, in pop culture, in life where this attempt at total self-preservation has ended badly.
There’s an episode of SpongeBob Squarepants that comes to mind (hang in there with me). SpongeBob has an accident. The doctor tells him if he gets injured one more time, he will be living in a machine. He is terrified, so he locks himself in his house with a penny, a used napkin, and a stale chip, convincing himself that this is all he needs to survive safely. His friends come and try to get him to come out to do his favorite things, but he is too afraid. Eventually, he does leave the house but not before finding out that keeping yourself alive by avoiding danger isn’t really living at all.
On a much more serious note, in Matthew 25 and Luke 19, Jesus shares a story about a master who gave his servants talents (or minas).
In a parable about the nature of the kingdom of heaven, Jesus tells of a master who was leaving town and gave three servants a different amount of money (or talent). When the master returned, he called up the three servants to whom he had given money and asked them what they did with it. Two men took the money given to them and doubled it, and the master celebrated them and gave them more. The third man buried his talent in the ground because he said he was afraid knowing his master was a hard man, so he gave back what he was given. The master was angry and called him lazy because he took what the master gave him and then was too afraid to do anything with it. Parable of the Talents (or Minas) can be found in Matthew 25 or Luke 19.
After Jesus rose from the dead, he spent time walking with his disciples before returning to heaven. As Jesus was returning to heaven, he gave them what we call The Great Commission: Go. Make disciples of all nations. And I’ll be with you, even to the end of the age, (Matthew 28:18-20, paraphrased). We received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost which empowered us even further to go and make disciples.
So, you see, we weren’t called to sit and wait for the end or sit and wait and watch life pass us by because we’re too afraid to get hurt or we’re too busy feeling sorry for ourselves. Walk in the freedom of knowing that no matter what happens to you in this life, waiting for us on the other end is Christ. The Apostle Paul kept this perspective in his journeys, “For to me, living means living for Christ, and dying is even better,” (Philippians 1:21, NLT).
To be fair, we’re not not in danger. Jesus didn’t coat the situation for the disciples when he commissioned them (as we can read in Matthew 10). He said they would be rejected for their message, arrested and thrown in jail, beaten, put on trial, betrayed by family and friends, and threatened. Then Jesus says, “Don’t be afraid of those who want to kill your body; they cannot touch your soul. Fear only God, who can destroy both soul and body in hell. What is the price of two sparrows – one copper coin? But not a single sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it. And the very hairs on your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are more valuable to God than a whole flock of sparrows,” (Matthew 10:28-31, NLT).
There are very real dangers, and I’m by no means saying we should go out and flippantly throw ourselves into the sights of danger saying, “It’s alright! God’s got me. We’re good. I can jump off this bridge into a pile of rocks with no support and God’s got me.” Don’t use the freedom of Christ as an excuse to put you or others in danger that you seek out.
What I am saying, though, is I am going to go for a run outside this weekend. Am I afraid to run outside? Yeah. Am I a believer in Jesus, one who believes that if I live, I will live for Christ, and if I die, I join him in eternity forever? Also yeah. So, to spite my fear, I am going to choose to put my faith in Jesus. I’ll look around me. I’ll let my husband know my planned route and carry my phone so we can be in contact should anything happen. Then, I’m going to go and live, glorifying God with this body in this life that he has given me and enjoy it. And you know what? I think you should, too.
What are you afraid to do? If you’re like me, that list has the potential to get long real quick. For the sake of this exercise, though, pick one thing that you can do some time in the next few days. Write it down or tell someone if you think this will keep you accountable to do so. Now, go do it, and thank God he is with you always, even unto the end.
