Bicycle Crash: One Year Later

A little over a year ago, I crashed my bike.  My friend Michael and I were finishing up a Saturday morning ride through the orchards and wine country of Palisade, and I hit a patch of loose rocks going down a semi-steep incline.  Crash.

By the grace of God, I was spared from pretty serious injuries.  My face was banged up, and my right knee didn’t work very well for a couple of months.  I recently realized that when I get up from sitting on the floor with my son and his toys, I was still using the method I had to employ last year when my knee didn’t work well.

Around October of last year, I was able to run again.  I didn’t get back on my bike again until the springtime.  During my recovery, I spent a lot of time in the pool, swimming laps, trying to get my knee to bend and move again.  Eventually, I remembered how to run, and I began to realize that something more was amiss than just an inflexible knee - which ultimately turned out to be bursitis – generous swelling of the glands and tissues around the ligaments, but no structural damage.  Something was wrong in the deepest part of me.

I love being able to exercise and stay active.  Running, swimming, and biking help me think, and there are times when those activities can even become prayerful exercises.  When I was injured, I couldn’t fully engage with those rhythms of exercise like I normally could.  There's a part of me which feels lost when I can’t exercise.

I think that part of me which feels lost and un-moored is my soul.

John Ortberg’s newest book is called Soul Keeping.  It’s a remarkable work, and I would recommend it highly.  Full disclosure – I’m biased toward this book because I enjoy Ortberg’s work, and also because he details various scenes from his twenty-year friendship with one of my heroes, a philosopher named Dallas Willard.  If you enjoy the work of either of these two men, you’ll love this book. 

The subtitle of Ortberg’s book is “Caring for the Most Important Part of You.”  I’m realizing that running, biking, and swimming involve caring for the most important part of me - not my body, but my soul.  There’s a part of me that is satisfied by these activities in a powerful way.  When I’m alone on a run – or when Will is in front of me in the jogging stroller – I feel gratitude, joy, and peace.  But here’s the key for me: my soul is cared for by my God, and when I run, as Eric Liddell once said famously in Chariots of Fire, “I feel His pleasure.”

Caring for the soul is impossible without a firm center, Ortberg writes.  The firm center we all need for our souls is the author of them – the God of the universe.  When I was injured a year ago, my relationship with God was deepened and strengthened because my normal rhythms of care were disrupted.  I had to learn to live with and lean on Christ in different ways.  Caring for my soul took on different forms, including reading and enjoying books like Soul Keeping.

Pick up a copy of Soul Keeping.  Wrestle with the question – “What does it mean to care for my soul?”  May the Lord of our souls guide you and I always.

Solo Dei gloria,

Travis

Forums, The Story, and Bonhoeffer

The Story and our denominational forums have been two of my favorite ministry efforts during the last month, and both for different reasons.  I came across this quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together which I immediately connected with our study of God’s grand story together:

"Consecutive reading of Biblical books forces everyone who wants to hear to put himself, or to allow himself to be found, where God has acted once and for all for the salvation of men.  We become a part of what one took place for our salvation.  Forgetting and losing ourselves, we, too, pass through the Red Sea, through the desert, across the Jordan into the promised land.  With Israel we fall into doubt and unbelief and through punishment and repentance experience again God's help and faithfulness.  All this is not mere reverie but holy, godly reality.  We are torn out of our own existence and set down in the midst of the holy history of God on earth.  There God dealt with us, and there He still deals with us, our needs and our sins, in judgment and grace.  It is not that God is the spectator and sharer of our present life, howsoever important that is; but rather that we are the reverent listeners and participants in God's action in the sacred story, the history of the Christ on earth.  And only in so far as we are there, is God with us today also" (p. 53-54).

It’s great to be able to see so many people – in discussion groups, in Sunday school, in small mid-week groups – “experiencing again God’s help and faithfulness” through The Story.  I hope each of you has a chance to jump in to our study in ways that bring blessing and fullness through Christ.

                                                                                

Our denominational forums have been civil, well-attended, and open to a variety of opinions and perspectives.  I’ve really enjoyed hearing the heart of this church expressed clearly at each forum.  Thanks to each of you who have been able to participate, and please keep praying for your leaders to listen well to God's calling.

I’m really glad we worship a sovereign God.  I’m grateful to serve under His leadership with each of you.  

Solo Dei gloria,

Travis