My ride to Hawley was much faster than I had anticipated. 17 miles took me 1:20 last week so I figured the same, but as I rode into Hawley I realized that I had ridden it too fast and to turn around would cause me to not get my whole expected 1:20 in. I decided to ride up the hill in Hawley to the Lake region IGA, this adds about 3 miles to the original plan and a monster hill. All said and done it took me 1:30 to do 24.75 miles.
The ride back was good but I was a little more spent than I thought I would be.
This is where St. Patrick comes in. Patrick was a teenager who was kidnapped by Celts and sold into slavery. He spent a few years tending flocks and praying. God told him to escape so he went back to England where he became a priest with a nice plot of land and other resources. At the age of 40 God called him to go back to Ireland to minister to the Celts. Understand the Celts were not nice people nor very welcome to visitors-especially escaped slaves. Patrick sold everything he had and evangelized the Celts. It was very expensive as he regularly had to pay off tribal leaders for protection. But the result was people knew Christ and it was all worth it.
As I rode the second half of my ride I just thought about how hard it must have been for St. Patrick to continue the journey, but he knew the end result was worth every bit of effort. He brought glory to God.
In everything we do there will be some difficulty, stress, opposition but the end result will always be worth it because you can look back at the route you had to take and say, "Yeah, I did that." And while you are at it, thank God for giving you the grace and ability to get there.
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