I'm out of shape and I know it. For the past few months if I do 'run', its been spent half walking half running, which is really discouraging. Back in high school I saw walking when tired as a sign of weakness, and told myself I'd never do it. Run slower, sure, but walk? Never. But alas I broke my own rule and walk sometimes now. As a sort of punishment, I'll walk back to the place I started walking (or even further) and start jogging from there. A do over you could say. Today when I found myself going backwards to run forwards, I thought about how many times you can can have a redo moment. It always seems that when a mistake is made, people want to go back in time to fix it. Movies like Groundhog Day and the closing episode of Felicity encourage people to think that if only I could go back and do it again, things would be different. Things would be fixed. A second chance, a clean start. Sounds good right?
I'm so thankful that I don't have to go back in time to undo my mistakes. I don't want to. I wouldn't be able to take the pressure of thinking that rectifying the wrong rested on my every decision. Because a second chance is still just that: chance. There's no guarantee in that word. God's grace doesn't work that way either. We're not given second chances, we're given a guarantee. He doesn't say hmm that last time wasn't good enough. Why don't you try again and maybe this time you'll prove yourself (Yes, I'm pretending to talk for God haha. For demonstration sake only!) I know that I'll screw that second chance up. And the third. and fourth. Any unscrewing up is by the grace of God. The guarantee is this: No matter how much I screw things up, I can't screw up God's love for me. It has already been given to me through Christ's death, and there's nothing I can do to earn it.
So do I still punish myself when I start walking? Yes. But then each time I walk back to run forward, I'm reminded of how God's grace doesn't function like that. Hahaha. Okay, yes it's kind of a backwards way of thinking, but God gives us funny reminders of the Gospel sometimes.
