You never know your limits

Many, I mean many, years ago when I was in high school in Ontario, track and field was quite a deal. I remember our gym teacher having us run track for what seemed to be forever.

It wasn’t really, but when you’re fourteen everything seems to be more than your limit. When we all finally stopped, and all of us were wheezing, he said OK guys, one more lap.

After our groans, he gave us something to think about. He said none of us never really know how much we can do, or take and when we think there is nothing left to give, there always is. For some reason, that has stayed with me for over fifty years.

There have been times, even this year when I thought, I have nothing left to give. I’m sure we’ve all had that thought, yet here we are. Last month as my wife and son were making crab apple jelly, my son commented on the thousands of holes in the bark of our crab apple tree, most likely from woodpeckers gorging on insects over the last few years.

This years’ crop of apples was the largest in the trees’ twenty-year life, despite the holes. You would think that the damage to the tree would prevent it from even throwing leaves, let alone apples. Goes to show that even a tree that seemingly should be dead, can still contribute and give.

We as people are a lot like that tree. Over our lifetime we will be rained and snowed on, have holes poked into us (figuratively), be ignored, abused, broken, and starved for many things that should sustain us.

Yet, when a friend, relative, son or daughter, pastor, and yes, God, ask us for anything, we always find something left in the tank. Again, we never know our limitations. Death of a loved one, a health scare, financial challenges can all be the plug that gets pulled as our life force wants to drain out of us.

When all seems hopeless, God shows up. We may wonder why He waits until then, or seemingly never shows up, but He does. The human in us cannot see or fathom how he works, and we get blinded by the light of the train in the tunnel when our world crashes.

It’s hard to get around this I know. I’ve watched a family this year being tormented by the death of a husband and father. They are trying to cope an

d live, but even now, months later the agony of being drained is quite evident. I watch this daily trying to encourage and lift as I can, yet it’s not enough, not yet.

I have worn the shoes and tied the laces, so I know their pain. Even through this, they give. They help each other, they lean on one another, laugh a lot less, and cry a lot more. Yet, they don’t give up.

God does see this. He sees how the grief is drilling painful holes in them every day. He also has a plan to lift and carry them through this. It will eventually get better, but it never goes away as my mom would say.

All of us will be faced with this unfair endurance race, and the devil will bark at us saying, give me one more lap. Well God will give us all the strength for one more, then another, then another. We need only lean on Him.

That is hard to do when pain and suffering is on your doorstep. Yet, one day you will hear Jesus knock on the door to your heart, and will patiently wait for you to open the door from the inside.

His knock may come in the form of someone offering to simply pray with you, cry with you or just sitting while you pour out. Listen closely for the door as He knocks ever so gently.

Open the door and He’ll tell you He knows your limits, even when you don’t know them. Let Him in and allow Him to give you what

He has to offer for just one more lap, or a thousand. God has a plan for your life, and it’s only by faith that we can let Him unfold it, even through the tough days.