The Passion to Pursue

I stay. It's getting darker, and I've always been scared of the dark. Even into my teen years, I often kept a light on in my room. I'm no Clark Kent when it comes to the dark, yet here I am in the middle of the woods at dusk. I've only a few minutes left before I won't be able to see anything but my imaginary creatures of horrifying proportions. Like the victim of the horror movie who lingers when the audience is yelling "Run!", I mindlessly keep a hopeful vigil even as each second darkens any possibilities that I will be rewarded with anything but a blindly groping walk back to my truck through a darkened forest.

I stay. It's a New Year's Day morning, and the temperature has found a home at 2 degrees. I stayed up to watch the new year come in, so I'm not exactly vibrant on this year's first morning. I am fighting the cold which lingers about me like a vulture, seemingly aware that it always wins out with time. I can't feel my fingers or toes, and I have no faith that I can even climb down out of the tree to go home let alone take on the quarry that most likely will not show in weather that freezes your breath before you can take it into your lungs.

I stay. Why do I stay? What drives me to embrace my fears and deny my comforts? A clear explanation of motive escapes me at such moments as these, but, in warmer and brighter climates, the answer is simple: I have a passion to pursue. It has been said, "It's not the thrill of the kill but the pace of the chase", and I wholeheartedly concur. I stay because it is part of the pursuit, and the pursuit has become my passion. I find a sort of pride in my pursuits. I can brave, I can endure, and I can sacrifice. No one pursues like I do, I tell myself, but I know better. There is One, and I cannot match His pursuit.

He stayed, too. I like to think that even as a child, He had the perfect perception that we know God does. He fully realized to which He was born, and He knew just how far from the comforts of home He was. He knew the hearts of the men He created, and He knew the weakness of the ones He called.

He stayed. He was beaten beyond recognition, and this still fell short of the humiliation he suffered. The nails driven in His hands were nothing compared to being driven from the presence of God into the pit of hell. He was face to face with all that is evil until He emerged the victor in a battle to the death- and to the life.

He stays still. He has denied all comforts which were rightfully due Him, and He has fearlessly pursued like no other has ever pursued. I cannot match this passion; I can only respond. His passion and pursuit has given me life and life abundantly (John 10:10), and He has only asked that I continue in that life by walking by His side. In doing so, I can learn the true passion of the pursuit.

So I stay.

To the Pilgrim

A pilgrim is a person on a pilgrimage. He is not home, but he is going to a place he will call home.
The focus is not the pilgrim himself but the pilgrimage, for the pilgrimage has a wealth unknown and a Guide unfathomed. He awaits the pilgrim, and your pilgrimage awaits you each and every day. PM's Field Notes are my pilgrimage as learned in the "varied and lovely realms of our natural world", as Fred Bear put it. It lies before me everyday, and when God gives me a voice to do so, I'll share it with others. Thanks for walking with me.