What are you running from?
What are you running to?
These can be connected questions, but the answers reveal distinctly different destinations.
It’s entirely appropriate to keep running away from situations that are evil, toxic and dangerous.
Unless you’ve been called to be light in the darkness, sent to heal and save what others are poisoning and destroying.
In that case you are running from safety and comfort, from security and certainty.
Sometimes running away is the wrong choice, especially when your escaping makes you more vulnerable to predators and more wrong choices.
But sometimes running away is the right choice, especially when you’ve got strong arms to run into that will do what’s right and get you back on your feet again with dignity and honor.
We can do our running with our body, but we can also keep running away in our mind and spirit. We can disengage from difficultly honest conversations. We can close our heart to painfully frustrating relationships.
Running away can be a way to avoid ourselves, the “you” that is being revealed amidst suffering.
And we can keep running to others, not just with our body, but also with our mind and spirit – thinking of them when they are apart from us, praying for them in the tough times and the good ones.
These writings from the Hebrew Scriptures and New Testament help frame my take on running away and running towards:
As soon as they had brought them out, one of them said, “Flee for your lives! Don’t look back, and don’t stop anywhere in the plain! Flee to the mountains or you will be swept away!” [Genesis 19:17]
I keep running in the path of your commands, for you have broadened my understanding. [Psalm 119:32]
“…but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will keep running and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” [Isaiah 40:31]
“Flee from Babylon! Run for your lives! Do not be destroyed because of her sins. It is time for the Lord’s vengeance; he will repay her what she deserves.” [Jeremiah 51:6]
This terrified them and they asked, “What have you done?” (They knew he was running away from the Lord, because he had already told them so.) [Jonah 1:10]
“Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Keep running in such a way as to get the prize.” [Saint Paul in 1Corinthians 9:24]
Maybe it’s just part of getting older and having pastored for almost two decades, there are times when it becomes more and more confusing whether I am running from the Lord (like Jonah) or running to him (like the Psalmist).
It was a long and difficult season of determining if and how to leave the church I was pastoring. During a correspondence at that time with an acquaintance who I had seen at a half-marathon race, he ended a message to me with the phrase “Keep running!”
You never know how those kind of random epitaphs will strike people. This one struck in me a deep chord of reflection and conviction. If I was going to keep running (like Isaiah), I didn’t want it to just be in a direction driven by fear, timidity, and anger (like Jeremiah and in Genesis).
If I was going to run, I wanted it to be towards the Lord (like Saint Paul) such that my striving produced in me love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and temperance.
How about you?
What are you running from?
What are you running to?
What will you become while you’re running?
May the beauty, truth, justice, and love of Christ Jesus be more real in you when you’ve finished your running.
Keep running.
