The Chase.

From my original blog, June 24, 2011. I need to hear it again... Maybe you do too...

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Phone call to make. Email to return. Text to write. Vacation to plan. Food to prepare. Dress to buy. Weekday dinner. Game night. Worship venue. Coffee date. Football score. Road trip. Book Club. Dance party. Family outing. Tuesday study. World news. Facebook invite. Cute guy. Church women. Breakfast fare.

Running. Chasing.

Torn piece to piece, in pieces. Life scattered. Segmented. Pulled. Lured. Drawn.

We're like threads on a net, the end caught to unravel, slipping away at grasp, maintaining no hold because of its lucrative power to seduce and secure so many directions.

I dial cell phone. I scan Facebook. I scour email. I propose text. I schedule plans.

All to which purpose, to which end?

These things, hoping and aiming to connect me to so many, instead pull me away. Because the directions all yank so severely that I am everywhere and no where, with everyone and no one, all at the same time. I chase.

I run the race, tangle in the vines.

Caught by good things, great parties, glad conversations. Nonethless, still caught.

He has called me to run this race for Him. To keep His heart, my focus. His pleadings, my will. His dictation, my life. His hope, my freedom.

"Throw off everything that hinders" Hebrews 12:1 states, petitioning me to take note and grapple.

Perhaps, what hinders, are good things. Good relationships, good events, good plans. But so much good causes little fulfillment in distraction.

I chase toward Him, yet divert my eyes and awareness as billboards like post-it notes line my path: text back, align time, check calendar, make room, purchase item. My eyes, my schedule, my thoughts distract my heart.

So perhaps there is a place where the chase becomes a pursual of so much good, it returns bad. And then the chase isn't really a chase at all, it's a repetitious swerve, jumping this way and that to end no where at all.

A few months ago, I started a new mantra: "Say no to good things." Because I found myself overbooked and unaware and empty of God as I tried to seek Him and others through so many avenues. So I had to learn, to reteach, to say no. To block time and place and space to simply be. That being, then, instead becomes the greater Chase. The chase towards Him.