On my run this morning I was nearly overwhelmed as I began to reflect on the Advent season and the coming celebration of Christmas. In these last days of Advent I cannot help that my patient waiting and quiet preparation begins to turn more and more to joy. I know what is coming, I know what we are about to celebrate. It's not presents but presence and no ordinary presence but the presence of God Himself among us, as us. Think about how truly awesome it is that the Lord, who created all things, so badly wanted to be reconciled to us that He Himself took pity on us and took on our human form and gave humanity the best gift we could hope for. A gift that was beyond all expectations, Himself, and when you realize the "us" includes "you" how can you not be bursting at the seams with true and complete joy. O come, o come Emmanuel!
The other day I got all caught up in setting running goals for myself for the rest of the year. After the goals were set, I found myself starting to worry about how I was going to reach them. Wondering if there would be time to sufficiently prepare for them all. My goals were to run a 5k in under 20 minutes, to run a half marathon in 1:25 minutes and qualify for and run in the Boston marathon in 2014. At first, I thought that setting and meeting these goals would make me a more serious runner. In fact, I thought that to be the "serious" runner I want to be that I needed these goals. However, while I was running the other morning I realized that first of all, I was thinking about how to shift my training to meet my 5k goal. Then I began thinking about the right approach to a 1:25 half while training to qualify for Boston in a full marathon a month later. That is when I realized that the ancillary goals were starting to consume my focus and quite possibly i...
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