GodReflection: Power Words

Endurance sounds strong. Marathons demand it. Survival calls for it. Inventions grow out of it. Life is made of it.

Endurance is not a Garden word. The first Garden couple couldn’t have understood its meaning in the midst of perfection.

Satan messed with the Garden and everything changed.

A dark cover descended to closed out perfection and a painless environment while on this side of the curtain evil spread like an epidemic.

God was not about to abandon His creation.

The death and resurrection of Jesus began to penetrate the thick curtain that separates corruption from eternal. The light of Jesus pokes from the side of perfection back into the world Satan altered.

Endurance is my reality for the moment.

Here is what I think.

It is still God’s world. It is still a world provided by His grace for me to enjoy. Yes, endurance plays its role. I bear light through endurance.

Backpack-fishing trips into a Colorado canyon cut by the Piedra River was a favorite outing of my younger days. I remember two things—the fun of the trip and the required endurance.

To follow the steep switchback mountain trails while loaded down with a heavy backpack and attempting to keep up with a group of long legged companions brought endurance into realities’ realm.

However, the endurance reward was great fishing, warm campfires, enjoyable friendship, and spending days within a pristine forest of the Creator.

I find remembrances of Piedra River fishing to be symbolic for endurance. God’s world is not to be endured it is to be relished.

As I enjoy God’s world my task is one of helping my fellow travelers look back through the curtain to see the holes of light and hope provided by Jesus.

We endure now as we look to a day when endurance is again a non-word. It will be obsolete. Jesus will make it so.

As I endure—yet enjoy life—I remember the promises:

“If we endure, we will also reign with him. If we disown him, he will also disown us.”

“Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.”

“Give thanks to the Lord Almighty, for the Lord is good; his love endures forever.”

There it is. I see it along the King’s highway.

In large signage, letters spell ENDURANCE.

I need this power word. It allows me to enjoy the present and to reach the future where the word will no longer exist.

Stay tuned.

Dr. Gary J. Sorrells – GodReflection on the Power Word Endurance

Gary@GodReflection.org