Just the way it was always meant

Today is the first day of lent, the days 'lengthen' and Easter approaches, it is often the time when people decide to stop doing something.

As I write ‘Cornerstone Runners’ (the first group formed in Cranbrook) has just celebrated its second birthday; it was two years ago that a few of us set out in the darkness for a 4 mile run towards Exeter and back. We are now backed and insured by ‘Run England’ and have 8 trained leaders – in any given week on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays between 20-40 runners go out for a bit of exercising and socialising. We have had couch – 5k, half marathon training, staggered starts, hill runs, crocodiling and the infamous ‘run to a pub’. Unsurprisingly the latter seems the most popular.

So why do we run? For some it is about fitness, others losing or maintaining weight, some might have personal goals to train for, many enjoy the social side and some just love running.

For me bits of all of the above are true, apart from the last part – I have said this before I don’t love running. Running is hard: my legs ache, it is tiring, I get hot and cold and wet and I can find many excuses NOT to go. So why do it? For me I guess it started as a challenge, I said I could never do it, I said it was impossible for me so I didn’t do it – a bit of self-fulfilling prophesy. This impasse was enough to make me try, to see if I had the mental stamina and discipline to go beyond my self-imposed limitations and although I will never win any races and am one of the slower members of the group, I can do it.

As church minister for Cranbrook people sometimes ask me what my job is, what my purpose is. Might I say simply this, I believe that inside each one of us are possibilities we negate because of self-imposed limitations, primarily - ‘I can’t. I believe that we often undervalue who we are and what is possible. I believe that we are made for much more and sometimes we just need to have a little bit of faith, often faith in ourselves.

So stop whatever you want this lent but alongside all that 'stopping' might I add, a cessation of the often wrong belief that you just can't. Might I also suggest that in all that stopping there should also be a starting - maybe start believing that you just might be able. In my experience a bit of practice, perseverance and self-belief goes a long way. For me lent, and the journey to the cross, is about a journey through the dark waters of the improbable and even the seemingly impossible to a place new place of belief, self worth and life in all its fullness, just the way it was always meant.