Well we spent the afternoon at the movies....Mark Wahlberg's new film....Arthur The King. I don't have any kind of review in mind here. I'm not really up on the specifics of adventure cross country races. We are dog people though....as the film was half about an extreme team race....and half about Arthur the dog. I guess....paws up....would be my review.
I did have something else though that I would like to address...related in a way to the movie. OK...there are all of these four member teams....and they have to give everything that they have....through all kinds of terrain and difficulties and dangers....and Mark Wahlberg's character is obsessed....not so much with winning....although he is obsessed with winning....as competing. The survival mode obsession is there from the opening scene....to the finish of the race near the end of the film.
Running was a minor obsession of mine once....I ran one marathon....well I completed a marathon....dehydrated with paramedics coming out to me on the course....I finished....second to the last. I'm not really into extreme sports....bicycling three or four miles from a bathroom is about as dangerous as I get....but I am into extreme pilgrimaging....(I looked it up....it's a word.)
I along with you see these reports of campus revivals. I read about one on CBN yesterday. It was a giant party...with hundreds of young people getting baptized. "Young people today are searching for God"....one of the people involved explained....and I surely don't deny that....but these young people....the ones where this baptism in the lake was a culmination of much more angst than just searching for God...they also do not know what they are getting into.
This is an extreme race. They are going to lose friends....while gaining brothers and sisters. They better get used to being called narrow-minded....and maybe responding with...."Well it's a narrow gate." Like that race in the Mark Wahlberg movie....if they snooze they lose. If they don't prepare....if they don't take along provisions....if they don't have a GPS of some sort....(God's Word)....then they will wind up in the mud or lost.
My wife and I were on a bike ride around Hilton Head Island....oh this about ten years ago....and I had the bright idea of walking the bikes on the sand around this forested pointed ridge....and then the mud showed up...I looked behind us...and in front of us....as the tide was coming in fast. We picked up the bikes and trudged through the mud....reaching the sand as the tide was up to our knees.
These are real darts that are thrown. There is a real Giant Despair to watch out for. There is a real Valley of Humiliation...and a real Apollyon....but then....you don't have to open the book at all....just stay in Vanity Fair....you won't even be a prisoner....but you won't be a soldier either.
When I would....'witness'....back in the 80s....and men would say a sinner's prayer at my leading....I didn't have the slightest idea what I was doing....and this part of the road to be travelled today is a hundred times more dangerous than the the superhighway back in the 1980s. There would be storms at times back then....but this is a maelstrom that we are entering today.
So I can rejoice in the newfound love of a Savior. I been there....and I never want to lose that childlike trust....but if we keep that GPS open we will get those alarms....'accident ahead' or 'bridge out' or golf ball sized hail due in ten minutes....or a tornado warning....and we can each time sing praises as the sound of a locomotive nears.
Note: I'd like to recommend a Charles Spurgeon sermon to you that we listened to on the drive to the theater.....just Google....Spurgeon Sermon YouTube....Blinded By Satan. The Prince of Preachers in the sermons says that the man who thinks himself superior....a...."man of broad thought....goes the broad way....but narrow-minded people....go in the narrow way....but then it leadeth unto life eternal."
