Day 41 – 5 miles is the new bottom line!
May 3, 2010
When I was a little girl, I loved the story of Cinderella. Rodgers and Hammerstein produced a musical that I watched every time it came out on television. I can still sing most of the songs in the musical version. One of my favorite songs from that musical is called “Impossible.” The words went like this:
“Impossible, for a plain yellow pumpkin to become a golden carriage. Impossible, for a plain country bumpkin and a prince to join in marriage. And four white mice will never be four white horses, such folderol and fiddle-dee-dee of courses. Impossible! But the world is full of zany’s and fools, who don’t believe in sensible rules, who don’t believe what sensible people say, and because these daft and dewy- eyed dopes keep building up impossible hopes, impossible things are happening every day!”
Now, that was a fairy tale, but the song makes a valid point. We often don’t accomplish what needs to be done because we don’t believe it can be done. We quit before we ever really try. But with a little imagination and faith, impossible things can happen. Unlike the story of Cinderella, the faith I claim in the God of Jesus is no fairy tale – it’s a faith in the God of the impossible who actually wants us to end poverty. But like the song suggests, I think we often fail as the people of God for lack of imagination. What could God do, if we let God be God? What could God do through us, if we dared to believe what our own scriptures tell us ? Jesus said, “Because I go to the Father, greater things thine I do, you will do.” Wow – how many of us are willing to walk out in faith on that one? What might happen in our world if we did? Or how about this one: the writer of the New Testament book of 1 John says to the believers, “As Jesus is, so are you in the world.” That’s another “Wow!!” How might we change the world so that God’s kingdom might come on the earth for ALL people, just as it is in heaven – if we started living into that one?
I have this book of sayings. My favorite one is this one: “What would you do, if you knew you could not fail?” You see, when we step out for God, in faith, seeking to bring God’s abundance and justice for all of us, we can’t fail – oh, we might have set backs; it might look like failure at times, but God’s kingdom IS coming on the earth for all people and we have the chance to help make that happen – we get to partner with the God of the universe; the God of the impossible. Pretty awesome, huh?
Saturday, for the first time in my 53, almost 54 years of life, I ran 5 miles. And I did it again this morning. Pretty awesome! Forty-one days ago, that was impossible for me. I still have a long way to go to run a half marathon and then a full marathon – that still feels pretty impossible – but today, I believe I actually might be able to do it when the time comes, if I keep working, keep pressing on, keep running toward hope. Ending poverty for my new Salvadoran friends seems equally impossible, perhaps even more so. But, what would happen if, just as I started from not being able to even run a mile, to now running 5, to continuing to push toward 13.5, then 26, then another 13.5, we stepped out believing that we could end poverty and started making changes one step, one half mile, one mile, at a time and kept moving toward the finish line? I believe we would actually get there.
Please run with me toward hope for my new friends, the children of Mia Flores and of Perquin, Morazan in El Salvador. If everyone who reads this blog gave $52 dollars - a dollar a mile for each mile I intend to race, that’s one dollar a day for a year, and told their friends to do the same, we could meet the goal of raising $104,000 for these fabulous children and we could begin to end the cycle of poverty, one child, one community at a time. If you want to help, go to www.togetherinhope.org, click on the “Get Involved” page and click on “Running Toward Hope.”
Run with me – the God of the impossible is running with us.
