Signposts on the Lakeshore

Not much beats a run by the lake on a fall day. Yes, yellowing trees still makes me smile. I unappologetically grin when I see a leaf fall to the ground. Fall makes me giddy, I guess.

Today by the lake I saw an elderly man, his jog just above a shuffle. Acutally, I heard him before I saw him. Around his neck drapped four large metals, the kind you get for doing something real speacial. They were unlike all the "Participent" awards I recieved as a child. With his feet barely lifting off the ground, he pounded the pavement at his own pace. Tum, tum, tum, beat the ground beneath. Cling, cling, cling, sand the metals in rhythm. He was saying to himself, "One more lap. One more lap. One more lap..."

I don't have any true understanding of this man or his life, but I have quite a number of thoughts about him. I'd like to imagine those were metals from days passed; days when the rhythm was faster, crisper. I imagine they are treasures from his youth, and now remind his sixty seven year old body of what his twnety year old body once acheived.

I think this might be what God meant when he told the Israelites through Jeremiah to "Set up signposts, Make landmarks; Set your heart toward the highway, The way in which you went. Turn back, O virgin of Israel, Turn back to these your cities" (Jeremiah 31:21). The Israelistes were to keep a reminder infront of them of the past faithulness of God. They were to reassure themselves with the promises that He would be faithful again.

So I'm wondering what my sign posts are? What are my life markers of Abba's faithfulness. Surely the road behind me is full of them. Of that there is no doubt. But what are they? I want to hang them around my neck when the mile seems longer than the one before; when the sand is deeper and each step more dreary. I want them near me, on me, in me. So even when I'm sixty seven I'll remember and take one more lap.