My husband loves cycling and often he enjoys watching the international races and longer tours. I find the end of the races intriguing, the sprint races to the finish line, some guys crashing, others being pitifully mean to one another. I enjoy the gruelling hill top finishes and the fabulous cobble stone races which always finds Fabulous Fab winning the stage. However, more often than not, I always sit with a deep sense of sadness which draws me in to a silent place until I shake myself off after the races. With each win there is sadness. Each win brings a hype, false praise and elevation of someone who gritted it out against body and machine. Tomorrow someone else is praised for winning the stage and so on and so on. I recall the piercing words of Susan Sarandon in the movie Shall we Dance? While she is sitting in the bar talking to the greasy detective she hired to spy on her husband, he asks her “so why do people get married?” She answers “We need a witness to our lives. There's a billion people on the planet... I mean, what does anyone life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things... all of it, all of the time, every day, you're saying 'Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness'."
While romantic as this may sound, I don’t believe people
feel this way about marriage, rather I believe people feel this way about other
people. They want others to witness their lives, to witness their glory. That
is why stage victories and short-lived wins are so dramatic; this is why when
people cross that line they jeer at the crowd and camera crews. It’s for glory,
it’s begging for a witness. I realised this today as I sat in my after stage
race sadness because I wondered at the 7 billion lives living simultaneously on
this planet right now. And I asked the question, “who is looking at our lives?”
Don’t our struggles, our trials, our fights, our tears, our broken
relationships and broken spirits, our days where we feel we can’t go on but we
push on and in to personal victory, don’t these matter? The resounding answer inside of my mind and
heart is that they matter most of all. Stage wins on races are short-lived and
while the winners are enjoying a few hours of glory, what will the rest of
their lives say? How many sportsmen end up broke, unemployed, overweight with
broken marriages and broken lives. This is because one moment or even 5 years
of sporting fame cannot build eternal character or healthy marriages, or
children who know they are loved. Moments of stage victories cannot bring
healing to another, it cannot create the space for Eternal glory to shine, it
cannot offer the greatest victories of all – that of God’s Grace and
redemption.
I confess sometimes I get sad after these stage wins because
I wonder to myself, who will be a witness to my life? What about what I have
overcome and travailed through to get here today? What about the struggles and
pains that no one saw or heard and what about my life when I am gone? I want my
life to matter, not for glory but for God. Then the scripture God has been
sharing with me over and over this week came in to my heart...
“You number and record the sojournings of my life, You place
my tears in to Your Bottle, see they are even written in Your book. Your vows are upon me, O God; I will render praise to You and
give You thank offerings. For You have delivered my life
from death, yes, and my feet from falling, that I may walk before God in the
light of life and of the living.” (Psalm 56)
The truth is that God is the witness to our
lives, He is the witness to every heart beat, to every hair on our head and to
every song we have sung and not yet sung. He is the One closest to us, to the world we may be a number on a social
security card, to God we are His Beloved child.
We are in a race but not one for glory or
pride only to leave the broken lives of the ones we once loved behind, but we
are in an eternal race against who we were yesterday and against the deceits of
the enemy who stands along the track screaming lies our way. We are running
ahead to meet our Beloved and to be eternally embraced by Him. We are not
running for gold, or a medal which we will leave behind to tarnish but we are
running ahead to live, to live eternally and contently, happily, joyfully,
worshipfully in the presence of our Maker.
What does one life mean? Asked Beverly
Clark (Susan Sarandon). It means the world because Yeshua (Jesus) crossed over
the great divide and left heaven to come to this wicked place called earth. He
left a Throne to live among a family who were poor, He left eternity to walk in
mortality, He left Worship to hear only slander and judgment against Him and He
left everything because He thought you and I were enough. He is the witness to
our lives and He says “child run well! Run with truth and in honour, run with
strength and with honesty, with obedience and loyalty, run with all you have
inside of you, run until you reach eternity. For I am the One who numbers your
days, I count them all for they are precious to me, I even count your tears –
how I catch everyone because they are the liquid whispers of a heart broken and
sad. How precious my thoughts are towards you, you need to know that and how
special you are to me for you are worth more than the birds in whom I also
delight. I am the Witness to your life – now be the witness about Mine.”
I don’t need the world to know my name; I
need the Creator of the world to know it. I don’t need to beat someone else to
the finish; I need to help lift them up so that they can finish their own race.
I don’t need a greasy medal or photo’s of victories, I just need the smiles on
the faces around me of the people who truly love God with all their hearts and
souls, the presence of the saints in whom is my delight. My soul breathes in
deeply tonight because how I am so ever grateful that my God is the Witness to
my life and His Witness is all I need, eternally.