Everyone should train as an endurance runner. Running teaches great lessons: Go one more mile. One more block. One more yard. One more step. Never quit. You can do it!
My mom used to say, “bloom where you’re planted.” That was her way of saying: Do the best you can do in the pot you’re in. Stop trying to change pots.
When things are tough, we look for a way out. We quit jobs, we quit hobbies, we quit friendships and marriages, we quit careers, churches, sports teams, we quit on our dreams. Some quit life itself.
But you will never learn the advanced lessons of true maturity if you quit too soon.
Some things can only be learned through long periods of struggle and pain. PLAN for pain. EXPECT struggle. Life is an endurance race. It is not a sprint but a marathon. You will suffer and you will have to GUT. IT. OUT. Expecting the struggle makes it easier. Jeremiah wrote a letter to the exiles who had been deported to Babylon. They were anxious to come home and resume their lives in Jerusalem. It was not to be.
“Build houses and live in them. Plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters. Take wives for your sons and give your daughters to men in marriage so that they may bear sons and daughters. Multiply. Increase there. Do not decrease. Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you. Pray to the Lord on its behalf, for when the city prospers, you will prosper.” Jeremiah 29:5-7.
If you find yourself in Babylon, bloom THERE.
Stop looking for that next big thing. Work hard, be creative, flourish. Bloom! Make a difference! Ask God to bless your Babylon, your difficult situation.
What did Churchill say—he whose iron will won history’s greatest war?
“Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense.”
God, give us strength to ENDURE and faith to trust You with everything.
ΑΩ
Household Words: 