Hebrews 10:25
Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another – and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

Today I am travelling up to Richmond so I can spend a few days with my family before I run in my first marathon on Saturday. In fact, I am writing this Evotion on the road from my iPhone, but that’s beside the point.

I’m pretty pumped about it because I’ve worked and trained hard for this, but more so because I’m running it in memory of my brother. I’ll write more about that after the race, so let me get to the point of today’s Evotion for now.

I’ve noticed over the last few weeks an increased desire to frequent a runner’s forum a bit more than I regularly do (which is pretty much daily as it is). Mostly it’s because there are some great people there who have run marathons before and they’re always full of great advice. As the day of my first 26.2 trek gets closer, I’m finding that I can’t get enough of their advice, their encouragement, but most of all, their unwavering belief that I will not only complete the race, but do well in it.

This is, of course, what our verse in Hebrews is about (not so much about church, although that’s the way it’s usually taught). The author has just told his readers that they have a way of access to God and that they can be confident in Jesus’ ability to save them and keep them. He also told them that there would be difficulty along the way. Is it any real surprise that he would tell them to ramp up the encouragement as they see the Day approaching? Of course not. All of us need in our faith exactly what I’ve needed the last few weeks: kind and honest words about what awaits us on the road ahead along with the encouraging words about how we can trust the process.

I will return from Richmond with a finisher’s medal, and you and I will both finish the greater race we’re running.

They’ll be crowns at the end of that one.

Psalm 78:16
He brought streams out of a rocky crag and made water flow down like rivers.

Like a lot of people in the south today, I woke up to the constant sounds of hammering. Apparently my neighbor saw the extended forecast last night and decided to build an ark. It’s probably a good call, since it’s been raining non-stop for a day with no signs of letting up until sometime this evening. It shouldn’t be long before I see the animals lining up in his yard, too.

I noticed something else, too, as I drove my car along the backroads of town this morning. The tremendous amount of rain overnight had caused all the gullies to fill with mini-streams which were pouring down along the sides of the roads. Now, I don’t want to live through a flood, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that there is something about the power and movement of water that fascinates me. Waves at the beach, hurricanes in the deep ocean, flushing water in the toilet. Water just speaks to me, and this morning I was reminded of something that I think is so simple, we often miss it: water always flows down. It is always searching, running, and re-routing itself in an attempt to get to the lowest place possible. Usually, we see this in a bad way and try not to live in flood plains because we know that eventually, at the lowest elevations, the water in a flood will find us. Today, though, I thought of this verse in Psalm 78 and was so thankful that the life-giving river that comes from the very throne of God flows down.

We live in a broken world, surrounded by broken people who are beaten down by the storms of life. They are tired, hurting, and in need of wholeness. Everything God has, they need, but there is no way for them to get to that river mentioned in Revelation 22, unless – and here’s the deep truth about the simple fact I mentioned earlier – that river flows down to them, and our verse tells us that we serve a God Who does just that. He brings water out of rocks and makes it flow down to the low places – to the people who have lost hope, who have found themselves lower than they ever thought possible. God’s river flows down to them, because God is all about reaching down. He did it with His people in the desert, and He did it for us through His Son.

Now, he wants to do it for others through us. We are the carriers of this river, and everywhere we go, it flows from God through us to the people in the low places. What a ministry. What a privilege.

What a great God.

Last Minute Marathon Tips: shot with Nikon D90 from Mike Kobal on Vimeo.

Thanks to Lou at RunningAhead.com for the link.