The Next Armstrong?

Too much good stuff happened in Cape Cod during my vacation to write about. So I will pick one good thing which happened to me: I bought my bike. Not just any bike. This was a Specialized allez elite, with double front chainwheels and all the trimmings. After waiting weeks to pick it up, I had driven myself into a frenzy of excitement over it. I would think: "the possibilities. I could become the next Armstrong. The next Eddy Merckx." Of course I could, just as easily as Jon Brower could lose 700 pounds. It amuses me that these thoughts of becoming the worlds greatest cyclest went through my mind before I had even done a fifty mile ride.

(Written 6/05)

Seven Years Later

When in the course of a man's life he is given a glimpse into his past he will often see staring back at him an entirely different man, at once familiar and foreign. In some ways he is the same but he has changed. His choices follow him. Experience molds him. Hardships break and re-form him.

We are all being changed in some profound way. We are all moving closer or further from the One who has made us. The spectator can judge the fruit of a man's choices, experiences, and hardships in light of the changes observed in him, for submission to God forges something lovely in him who yields but rebellion corrodes the Imagio Deo in every life.

I will not delete this blog though I may be the only one to revisit it. It provides a point of reference for me. It serves as a kind of humorous and meaningful sign post for my life. It gives an insightful glimpse into my not too distant yet substantially different past. 

I trust that I will look back upon this post in several years and know that the work has continued which makes a man increasingly foreign to himself as He becomes the friend of God.