Called to Encourage

I'll chalk it up to the fact that I am no techno-geek and it takes me far too long to figure out how to fully use all of the functionality designed into anything electronic. Way too early this morning I pulled myself out of bed and over to the stadium at Chambersburg High School for my weekly dose of speed (that would be mile repeats on a track). As my body semi-rejected any efforts to "warm-up" with a slow first mile, the powerfully transcendent beat of Pat Benatar's "Invincible" played through my I-Phone and into my ear buds to help kick-start the first mile. My schedule called for eight miles, each mile at a descending pace, with the plan to cover the last mile fastest. I felt great as the miles broke under my feet in the dark stadium, and soon the first signs of daylight slipped through the horizon and I had one mile left before packing it in. It goes without saying that the last one is the toughest, most painful mile of them all. To that point, the music had been perfect, marking my pace and encouraging my effort. Just as I was to start that last mile though, Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb" locked in on shuffle. To my earlier admission,  NO, I do not yet know how to establish play lists. So the beat slows, and I wonder out loud how the heck I am going to dig deep and go harder for one last mile when a song so depressing and downbeat is playing? I could feel my pace slow and the effort that it now took to run as fast as I was previously running, let alone faster, seem overwhelmingly daunting. What a difference a song makes! I finished out the workout but it was more of a struggle than it should have been.

When we hit difficult, challenging times in life what we need most is the encouragement and support of positive and caring friends - I've come to know that there are people in my life that I must surround myself with during tough times because they'll help get me through. Likewise, there are folks I need to avoid like the plague during life's darkest moments because they'll only serve to bring me down lower. As Christians we are called to encourage one another in our respective walks, we are called to uplift, support, embolden, and love. Everyone is carrying a burden of some kind. Everyone at some point is on that last, toughest mile of a problem and what they need from us is a little Pat Benatar. In 1 Thessalonians 5:11 Paul commands that we “...encourage one another and build up one another, just as you also are doing.” God knew there would be "times like these" when we'd need a boost, a dose of positivity, an encouraging word, so that we could endure. because sometimes life is simply about enduring. Who are you being for people? Who are you helping endure? Believe and Encourage, because you can't have one without the other.