My family and I live in the Pacific Northwest. We know about cloudy days…recently I was able to take a few days off and head to central Oregon for some fun, a little business and some time for a personal retreat. My first day there, I decided to go skiing. It’s about a 30-minute drive from where I was staying up to Mt. Bachelor. Most of the way up it was cloudy…overcast with even some fog…but, as I got within a couple of miles of the lodge at the base of the mountain, the sky broke out into a bluebird day…The mountains were spectacular and the snow was great! When I started up the lift to ski, per my usual tendency, I wanted to get all I could get in terms of skiing…after a couple of runs I was feeling it…actually, I felt it the first run…I’m not in skiing shape. This was my first ski day this season…after a couple of runs I started slowing the pace a bit…it dawned on me that, when it comes to skiing, my appetite is often bigger than my stomach…when you back off a bit, you enjoy it more…so I did…earlier in the morning, as I was reading and praying, God revealed to me some pretty cool stuff…part of it related to the parable of the sower…I heard, “Don’t let thorns choke out the life I have for you.” The thorns are things like money and the cares of life that lately have had me, if not in the pit, at least in a cloudy, overcast, even foggy zone…Thanks, God, for helping me poke through the clouds today!
