#5kMay2020 Blog (Day 25)

Happy Memorial Day! 

It was another HOT one out there today. I can hardly believe the different temperatures we have run in this month. From subarctic blasts to oppressive rays of heat from the orange orb of death, it has been quite the month! That is part of what makes the “5k Every Day in the Month of May” challenge so interesting. We effectively transition from winter weather to summer weather while consistently hammering away at the miles. 

For anyone who has made it this far, congratulations! You rock! You should be super proud of yourself, but don’t quit, yet! The finish line is in site, and we have to give it all we’ve got to get to the end.

Daily Run: This morning I ran with Jodi and my ten-year-old daughter, Piper. We ran a rather hot “Arrowhead Route” for a total of 3.1 miles at an average pace of 9:36 per mile, which was a total moving time of 29 minutes and 48 seconds. Poor Piper was pretty beat by the end. I was glad to be done for the day.

Daily Bible Reading: One of my favorite laughable moments in the gospels is found in John 6.

Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

John 6:15, ESV

I can only imagine this scenario playing out. Jesus has just miraculously fed the 5,000, and this was on the heads of showing that He was equal with God. Now the people wanted to come and take him by force to make Him king.

Haha!!

Do they have any idea who they are dealing with, here? HE IS ALREADY KING. They do not need to try to take Him by force to make Him something that He already is. He is already the King Forever. But they can’t see it. They want Him to be a certain kind of king, and that is never going to happen.

People are funny sometimes. Too many times we want people to be the way that we want them to be. We struggle to appreciate who they really are. And worse, we struggle to encourage them to be who GOD created them to be.

Jesus was doing the will of the Father. He was doing exactly what the Father was telling Him to do… yet the people were not satisfied with the time table and wanted to take Him by force to make Him king.

Well, good luck with that. If there is one thing that I have learned throughout the years it is that you cannot make God do anything by force. God is going to do what God is going to do. He is more than happy to dialogue with us about what He is about to do. In fact, that kind of dialogue is encouraged throughout the scriptures. But God is God, we are not. I, for one, am happy about that.

God doesn’t always do what I want Him to do. Perhaps you have noticed the same thing in your own life. But I have found that if you hang around long enough and pay close enough attention, it will be impossible to miss the fact that what He wants to do is always better.