Face set like flint

I had a great run today, I got up and just decided to try and run to Exeter and back as fast as I could; at just under 9 miles and at an average of 9m 30secs a mile I was really pleased, nay delighted. I came back and ate loads! The human body is amazing and fortunately mine kept going, as hills came or as I tired and wanted to give up I tried to raise my legs a little higher and resolutely tried a bit harder. This was all fine until the last mile or two, my legs felt like lead, my back and shoulders ached and my feet were screaming for me to stop, I carried to the end, resolutely, but slower.

Sometimes it seems as though we just have got to decide what it is we want to do and try really hard and when the going gets really tough we just have to carry on trying.

As I write it is the Saturday before Easter week, the time when Christians remember Jesus' journey towards Jerusalem, the celebration of Palm Sunday, that final supper between friends, the agonising in Gethsemane, the false charges, trial and flogging; then the crucifixion of an innocent. The denouement is an empty tomb and the promise of life in the face of death. I guess we will never really know what Jesus saw ahead yet he must have known that he was heading for trouble; the gospel writers each record him explaining to his disciples that this journey would end in his death. Yet, just as the prophet Isaiah had intimated many hundreds of years before, Jesus set his face towards Jerusalem ‘face like flint’, step by step – unflinchingly.

As a Christian I am a follower of Jesus, I made that decision 30 years ago, I wouldn’t suggest that my following has been unflinching, there are times when I have wandered along my own path before returning and trying to trace his steps again, there are times that I have reached a dead end and times I have lagged way behind. Yet in my heart of hearts this is a journey that I will never give up on; there is something about following this man Jesus – the one who loved until it killed him, who embraced those whom society shunned, who offered love and mercy and healing and grace and forgiveness to the broken and hopeless, even to those who opposed, beat and murdered him – ‘father forgive them for they know not what they do’.

I can never be like this man but I want to learn from him and from his story, I want to seek from God the purpose and meaning in my journeying, I want (to quote St Martin’s Primary school) ‘to be the best I can be’, I want to join in the race and embrace the joys and challenges of life, learning from the person of Jesus, to aspire and set my face towards where God is calling me, unflinchingly, like flint, this Easter week and beyond.