“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion?

Come to Me. Get away with Me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with Me and work with Me— watch how I do it.

Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.

I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with Me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”

– Jesus, The Message, Matthew 11

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The Middle Mile

“To most of us, the most important parts of a journey are the start and finish. But the part of a trip that really tests the traveler is neither the beginning nor the end but the middle mile.

Anybody can be enthusiastic at the start. The long road invites you, you are fresh and ready to go. It is easy to sing then.

And it is easy to be exuberant at the finish. You may be footsore and weary but you have arrived, the goal is reached, the crown is won. It is not difficult to be happy then.

But on that dreary middle mile when the glory of the start has died away and you are too far from the goal to be inspired by it, on the tedious middle mile when life settles down to its regular routine and monotony–there is the stretch that tires out the traveler. If you can sing along the middle mile, you’ve learned one of life’s most difficult lessons.  It proves, as nothing else can, that character. And it gets least attention from the world because there is nothing very dramatic about it.

It’s a hard mile, for it’s too far to go back and a long way to go on. But if you can keep a song within and a smile without on this dreariest stretch of life, if you can learn to transform it into a paradise of its own, you have mastered the greatest secret of victorious living, the problem of the middle mile.”

-Vance Havner, as found in The Family Book of Christian Values

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As a way to build community that matters here, take a moment and leave a comment letting us know of something you are struggling with or something we can pray for you about. Happy Sunday, friends.