Went for a Run

PSALM 46

After i heard about the tragic end of the Boston Marathon this week, I went for a run. When the fur flies or a crisis erupts or an event slams me silly, I go for a run. It seems the only thing to do.

I went for a run as an act of defiance--albeit a feeble one--but defiance nonetheless. I ran in my neighborhood, on my streets, through my woods--in OUR neighborhood, on OUR streets, and through OUR woods. This run was a statement.

A terrorist has one end in mind. They want to take your place. They want the place where you feel safe, feel at home, the place you know, and the place where you are known. They want to make you afraid in your own skin. They want you to feel out of place. 

To take the streets on a walk, on a run, to exercise the dog, or to speak to the mail carrier as she drops the bills in the box is a denunciation of the terrorist. It is a simple statement that this place is still ours. So, women take to streets at midnight in a community run named “Take Back the Night,” an elderly couple take their schnauzer for a stroll, and a neighbor waters his lawn. 

As we do so, we might well finally comprehend one of the most disturbing texts in all of scripture--Ps. 137:9--a cry for God’s retaliation so vengeful, so hateful, and so horrific that many of us would just as soon excise it from our scriptures. But watching the news from Boston, we can understand the depth of our reaction. We want justice. We want recompense. We want someone to pay--and pay dearly. 

The Psalmist was wise enough to turn all those feelings and reactions over to God, letting go of the need to act on them, putting them in God’s hands, for God could actually deal with them. 

So, helpless as I was to do a blessed thing in or around Boston, I went for a run. For them. Because of them. These are OUR streets--dear God, these are OUR streets. 

But I also went for a run to pray.

Prayer is needful conversation. It is the acceptance and affirmation that God is a relationship and not an explanation. There is no point in asking why anymore. With each new experience of horror and violence that shatters innocent people who made the simple mistake of joining a normal experience--school children going to school, runners going to a race, family members going to watch them, kids going to a movie, shoppers going to a mall--the search of reasons becomes irrelevant. What good does it do to know why? Someone broken beyond reason seeks to shatter the illusion of normalcy for everyone else. Name it original sin, if you want to. They demand we notice them. So, we do. So what good does it do to know why? Instead, we reach for comfort, healing, an embrace--for love will take us from the nightmare. God will listen. God will meet us with strength we did not know was there. God will push us out the door to take the streets. 

What happened as the bombs went off? Panic, of course, but then, immediately, without much thought, people cared for people--professional responders, but also runners, spectators, and anyone else near at hand. God was there. Redemption was immediate. Healing began instantly. 

God renounced the terrorist immediately, definitively, and resoundingly. God did so through human hands, hearts, and action.

That’s how God is.

God moves us. God empowers us to overcome. God frees us. The terrorist sought to freeze us, weaken us, and imprison us. God made sure he or she failed. 

That’s why I prayed. I prayed hard. I prayed in sorrow. I prayed in despair.

God heard.

“Be still and know that I am God.”