Always a choice

I run beneath a canopy of Oak tangled with moss that drips low and sways gently, a promenade of grandeur that lines this slow trudge of mine.  Beauty and splendor cascading down on this early morning run, as the sun breaks through a horizon of clouds, glowing white hot. 

 

It could be a picture from a movie, but it is not, it is my life and this is my moment and this is my God.

And this is also a choice, my choice.

I could curse at the tired, creaky bones that fight to keep this frame aright or swear oaths against the extra pounds of life layered across this body.  I could breathe heavy with frustration and heave deep with anger or I could choose a different way, a new way, an awakening of sorts to the God all around.

A choice made a thousand times over that string together to tell the script of my life ~ a story of praise or of disgruntled days.

I could focus on the gnats that buzz and bother, that nag and frustrate for assuredly as my foot falls on this earth there will always be a great Pestilence.  So, the choice is mine, the choice is yours.  

For there is always, always the canopy of beauty, all we have to do is look up and there He is, draping His people in goodness.

And the Lifter of my head continues to coax and encourage me to pry the eyes from the old, tired feet and to surpass eyelevel (for there I can only see myself and those that are so broken, the same as me) and to fix my eyes aloft on the Beauty that is above.

Can it be that this is my intended stance?  Before the fall, before I fell, before the slip that rent a tear in all of humanity, before the break that broke our natural posture.  Were we always intended to stand with eyes fixed on high?  I believe my break may have just gotten a little smaller.  For this position with eyes set above, arms stretched wide, and open hands ready to receive all that He has to give, this feels quite natural, more like the me that He intended me to be.

I make a million choices, over and over again ~ set eyes on high or down below? One makes whole and the other tears asunder.

I pray that I choose well and race on until I find myself under the final canopy of beauty that will usher me in to the moment where my foot finally falls on the streets of gold and I run effortlessly, and pain free into the arms of the One that ran this race before me.  The One that prepared a way for me.

I pray the same for you, that you race on and choose well.

  Photos courtesy of Tricia Garrett