Stronger



(Picture by Jeff Myers)

Over a somewhat random course of events, I happened upon my Chicago journal from the mission trip last summer and I wanted to share some of the thoughts I learned from that week. There are so many memories from that trip that stick out to me, that added clarity to my life and my walk with Christ. One of these is pictured above. We were helping out at a camp ground called "Riverwood," and one of the tasks they gave us was to pull this "log" out of the river. Anyway, there were just a few of us to begin with, but when we realized this log, which was more like a tree, was too heavy for us we went out and grabbed some more people. I'm not going to lie, when we got went back with everyone, I had it in my head that it would suddenly be easy. But you know what? It wasn't. We had to push it out in spurts ("one, two, three!" *pick up and shove*). But we got it out. And it felt so good to be a part of that. I realized that it was a great analogy for our walk through life. This world we live in is messed up. We are messed up, and we mess up, often. And there is stuff that will be thrown at us throughout our life time that is rough. Stuff that we can't go through alone. God has put people in our lives to help us, but that doesn't mean it'll be simple. Life is still going to be difficult, bad stuff is still going to happen. Trusting God and the people He has put in our lives doesn't make it easy. It just make it possible. And with Him, with them, we can get through the crap thrown at us. We can overcome the downed trees in our path, climb the mountains that appear in front of us and defeat the Goliath's that stand in our way. Because with God all things are possible. And one heave, one step, one stone at a time, we can get through anything. And we will be stronger because of it.