Thirty years ago I confronted an insurmountable obstacle.
After spinal surgery and five weeks of recovery, therapists loaded me into my first wheelchair and rolled me into the hospital hallway where they’d placed a 10-foot strip of red tape. My first therapy goal was to push my chair 10 feet.
I couldn’t do it.
Couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. Or didn’t want to. Or didn’t care. Didn’t matter, because that 10-foot goal defeated me for weeks. Might as well have been ten times around the world.
Yeas later I climbed on a handcycle and cranked a few blocks, and than a few miles. Eventually I did a 1500-mile Mississippi River ride and a bunch of other tours. When you look at all of the lines on the map and consider the thousands of miles they represent, that 10-foot strip of red tape seems sort of silly, doesn’t it?
I wanted to quit. Ten feet was just too much!
Just picture that day in the hospital hallway, me all discouraged and the nurses and therapists cheering and encouraging and telling me I could do it, I could do more than I could possibly imagine. But on that day, do you think those therapists imagined a 1500-mile handcycle ride or more than 37,000 miles of riding and training? I’m absolutely certain none of them saw any of that.
But God did.
He saw all of it – he pain and struggle, the celebration and triumph. He pictured something bigger and more outrageous than anyone in that hallway would have dared to imagine.
We can’t out-dream God.
If your dream isn’t crazy, if it doesn’t require more than self-help, if you don’t need faith and hope to follow it…maybe it’s not big enough.
Please don’t buy the world’s lie that you can do or be whatever you want if only you work hard enough or have enough faith. I sit in a wheelchair. My inability to win the Tour de France isn’t a lack-of-faith-or-hard-work issue, it’s a lack-of-working-legs issue (with age and talent tossed in as well). The tough reality is: I simply can’t be anything I want to be.
However, if I’m willing to dream big dreams, to listen and follow, I can be EVERYTHING Jesus wants me to be.
Which is exactly what I would want in the first place, if I were smart enough.