A Great "Pool" of Witnesses

I want to share an image with you, dear friends, from my life of fitness – and image that I think has great application for our spiritual lives and our lives as friends and neighbors.

About a year ago, I started on a crazy adventure with swimming.  At the prompting of a friend, I started pursuing the goal of swimming one mile without taking any breaks.  That’s 72 lengths of the 25-yard pool at the Maslowski Center.  At the time, the furthest I had swum was 32 lengths!  I had a long way to go.

During that training, I simply swam a little more each day.  I worked my way up to one-mile workouts.  Then I worked on taking fewer and fewer breaks.  And I could probably write a whole blog post about incremental gains. 

But I want to focus on something else here.  Swimming the distance was one thing.  But there was another challenge – how do you keep track of all those laps?  And I developed a method of counting where I would count lengths of the pool up to a certain number and then back down.  And as I swam, I visualized someone from my life holding a sign at the other end of the pool with the next number on it.  I would visualize people who were encouragers in my life, people I could count on for love and support.  In my mind, they would run from one end of the pool to the other and cheer for me as I swam just one more length of the pool.  And then run to the other end and cheer me on to the next one.

It was a tremendous feeling of accomplishment last December when I swam that uninterrupted mile for the first time.  But even more, the experience of visualizing those advocates in my life again and again that proved to be the real blessing.

Who are the people in your life you can count on?  Who are your encouragers and supporters?  And who can count on you?  Spend some time in prayer today, giving thanks to God for those who cheer you on in your challenges.  And ask God to help you be an encourager to others, too.

Because we’re all in this journey together.


P.S. – I remain convinced that House Church would provide you with wonderful company of encouragers.  And folks you could encourage as well!  Learn more here: www.wadenaimmanuel.org/housechurch

For other news, visit: https://www.wadenaimmanuel.org/announcements


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