Finding Yourself in 2020

“Where does the strength come to finish the race? It comes from within.” – Eric Liddell, Chariots of Fire

The pandemic season has been an incredibly busy season for me. Between a slammed schedule and the weirdness of dealing with the COVID restrictions, I felt like my strength had waned. I was weary.

I was way too busy and had forgone an important habit in my life — my daily walks. More than exercise or a chance to get away from my desk, my walks were prayer times, re-centering times, moments to remember that He is God and I am not… A time to present my needs and the concerns of my family and friends and my nation to the Lord. It was a strength in my life that I had allowed schedules to push out of the way.

Until my strength began to falter.

And then I realized that those prayer walks were not simply an “add on” to my Christian life. They were part of what sustained me and a big part of my identity in Christ — who I am and who I’ve been over many years of loving and serving God. 

I was faltering because I had let the heavy weights of work and schedules and pandemic restrictions slow me down, weigh me down. Not to mention, as the writer of Hebrews words it  — “the sin that so easily besets us” — besets me. If I’m not praying, my concerns about life and situations turns to worry and fretting and churning inside my soul. It affects my character and how I carry myself in my relationships and ultimately leads to sin. A word spoken out of turn, an attitude that tears down instead of building up, a miscalculation of perspective.

And so, I’m walking again.  I’m dedicating that time and space to who I am in God — a lover of God, a prayer warrior, a person people can count on to be praying for them. A person with ears open to hear what the spirit of the Lord is speaking to the church and to me.

2020 doesn’t have to be a wash. Find yourself — and the strength within — and let’s finish 2020 out strong.

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God as set before us.” (Hebrews 12:1, NLT)