Final Thoughts...Lessons learned/to learn

Here are some thoughts that came to Julie and I as we rode home from New Jersey and reflected on what the Sea To Sea Tour had impressed upon us. I'm sure we missed something that will come to mind later. We just want to share these with you.
Thank you again for you support and encouragement for our adventure. It was a trip of a lifetime!! We thank God for this opportunity and His protection and the health given us for this long tour.

Hospitality
Our tour was blessed with an outpouring of hospitality. Local churches lavished us with meals, refreshments, and encouragement along the route. One particular experience stands out….the hospitality of the Good Shepard Lutheran Church in McCook, Nebraska. They had no idea of our tour coming to their community, much less camping at the YWCA lawn across the street from them for the weekend. Some of our tour members attended services there on Sunday morning and explained our tour and cause. They opened their air-conditioned building to us for sleeping on Sunday night. The temperature at 6:40 p.m. was 101 degrees. They supplied the entire tour with refreshments all day Sunday and into the night. All this at the spur of the moment. Do I show that kind of hospitality to complete strangers…no strings attached?

Taking the Church to the Streets
One pastor in his remarks referred to our tour as “taking the church to the streets”. That stuck with me. We were interacting with people of all backgrounds during our tour and giving information about our cause. They were, for the most part, encouraging, accepting, and in some cases gave monies toward our cause spontaneously. That taught me that we need to meet people were they are in life, not just give an invitation to come to church. Real people have real needs in their life. We have the Goods News of Christ to give them purpose and direction in this life and eternally, but must also understand their physical and emotional needs. We cannot just wait for people to come knocking on our church door. Engage people in everyday life.

Encouragement/Generosity
I have been blessed by the actions of so many people. Their encouraging words, cards, emails, and yes, by monies given for the cause held me up. On particularly hard biking days, I would think about all the family and friends that were praying for me and I could feel physically and emotionally the strength that I needed to complete that day. I found out I was on prayer lists at various churches along our tour route that had been assigned to people I had not even know. My picture was on a family’s refrigerator in the State of Washington as a reminder for their family prayer time. What a lesson in what encouragement can give.

Parallels of Cycling to Life;

---Hills and valleys
Life, as well as cycling, has ups and downs. There are those exhilarating days of being on top of the hill/mountain and you can feel the refreshing air blowing in your face, or the breath of Spirit refreshing your soul by a mountain top experience. You can’t wait to enjoy the ride ahead, as it is easy, fast, and seems to take little effort. In fact sometimes you need to hit the brakes, as you are just passing everything by too fast and are in danger of losing control and wiping out. But eventually you find yourself in a valley below and at times there is no refreshing breeze there. In fact, some valleys are stifling hot and oppressive. We need to be ready for those times. The valley may even be so deep that we are in shadows and feel alone and scared. We had better have enough food and drink to make it out of there. We need to be grounded in God’s Word for those times, to hold on, to have it as part of our being to hang on to and make our way out. Then there is the climb out. It will test all of your strength as your muscles and emotions cry out for relief. But trust in your training and God’s promises and you will go on to the next hilltop.

---Keep your eyes on the path
I’ve learned the hard way of what it costs to take your eyes off the road ahead during cycling. It cost me 5 days in the hospital a few years ago, a punctured lung, 2 broken ribs, separated shoulder, and concussion. The same is true in life….keep you eyes on God’s promises and your Christian pathway. Don’t trip and stumble or veer off the path.

---Follow the pace line leader
In cycling, pace lines are used to draft the bikers in a line behind the leader and break the air resistance. In one of our daily “Shifting Gears” devotionals, we were reminded of how difficult we can make it for ourselves when we leave the pace line. We just need to tuck in behind Christ, who has done it all for our sakes. We cannot do it by ourselves.

---Perseverance
No matter how hard the wind is blowing, how hot the temperature, how rough the road, we need to keep pedaling. We need to keep our focus on what Christ has done for us and push on through the difficulties of life. He is always there for us.

---Setting goals, but taking one day at a time
Our tour needed long terms goals for fund raising, completing the route, and what we needed to accomplish. To complete the end goal requires not focusing on the end, but the day you are in. Focus on completing the task of today only. “Give us THIS day our DAILY bread”.

---Community on the move
Our bike tour was a mobile community, but a community none the less. We needed to rely on each other for encouragement, help, and support. Individual goals sometimes needed to be sacrificed for helping another. We needed to overlook differences in order to accomplish the group’s goal of finishing the tour. This is a great lesson for the church.

Hope for Future
There was a large group of young people on the tour and I was encouraged by their faith and their demonstration of their faith. They were overheard at times discussing their favorite hymns and questioning the wisdom of spending lots of money on church buildings. It is good to hear that kind of conversation and gives me hope for the church of the next generations.

Land of Plenty
Touring across North America on a bike impresses you with the abundance of land, crops, and wealth displayed. There are also great differences in areas, as to what people have and standard of living. Am I sharing as Christ commands? “Do it unto the least of these and you do it unto Me”.

Simplify Life
Living out of 2 laundry baskets of all my possessions on the tour has impacted me on how I need to simplify my life. What is important in life? Turn the TV off more. What about all the things in the basement I have not used in 10 years? Slow down and enjoy this day, it is not a (rat) race. I need to be more content with what I have and not get caught up in keeping pace with what Madison Ave says I need.

Removing Barriers
The tour was in partnership with the Reformed Church in America. We had great fellowship on the tour. I need to work to break down barriers between believers in Christ’s forgiving love and sacrifice for us.

God’s Protection
As a tour, we could feel God’s protection around us. The prayers of God’s people were answered, as there were no accidents that caused permanent injury or death. There were some tour ending accidents, but all are healable in due time. Believe me, there were some frightening roads that we rode on with heavy speeding traffic and no shoulder for a bike to ride on. One day as we biked through the Dinosaur Hills area, I imagined that God’s angels were lining the hilltops watching over us. Maybe I was not imagining?!