TOSRV 2006

How wonderful to accomplish a challenging task. Even though it was my third year doing this two-day, 210-mile bike ride, there is still a great sense of having risen to the challenge once again. It's kinda' nice to be a veteran, and to see the newbies gain their own sense of accomplishment.

Each year presents its own challenges. This year we didn't get the forecast rain for Saturday, but Sunday made up for it. We encountered a fair number of flats, including one for me on Saturday and at least two or three to others on Sunday. The lengthy lunch break on Sunday while we waited for the late arrivals, who did admirably in the face of their own adversity, ended up putting us in the rain for an hour longer than we'd have encountered otherwise. But the rain wasn't nearly as torrential as at the Seagull century in October, nor the wind nearly as strong. And for once we all finished pretty close together.

Go Team Dog!

Other "dirty" thoughts

More thoughts rooted in the dirt under my nails on Saturday:

Yes, the more we nurture a relationship, lavish healthy care on it, the more beautiful it becomes, just like a well-tended garden. But in our relationship with God, it is always he who is tending and nurturing us. Unlike the flowers in my garden, though, we have a choice to make concerning whether we will be tended.

Now, carrying that thought onward and linking it to the previous post, too often we choose to tend and nurture weeds in our lives. They respond fabulously, too, growing to the best of their ability, overrunning the garden. So again, we must choose what we feed carefully. We will fail to achieve the beauty which God wants to reflect off of us if we don't allow him to weed and prune us, to keep us in line.

We shouldn't expect God to contribute to the garden's growth when we're promoting the weeds. And we should be aware, just as the workers in the field in that parable about the wheat with the weeds, that we don't always recognize the weeds in our lives. We need to trust God's tending even (especially) when he seems to be nurturing something in us other than what we think needs to grow.

We sometimes tend to think of ourselves as weeds or as flowers, in a judgmental way. It is more helpful for me to think of my life as a garden (a vineyard?), made up of both types of plants. It is really important for me to allow the Diving Gardener to tend me!