Do you sometimes feel like this man? He's being chased, or perhaps he's chasing someone else. Maybe he's out front and trying to stay there, or else he could be at the back of the pack and attempting to catch up. Whatever his position in the race, he knows that he has to keep running or else other people will prevent him from winning.
Do you ever feel as if circumstances are conspiring against you to prevent you from doing what you want, or even need to achieve? Does it seem sometimes as if you're being hounded? Does it get to the point where you think perhaps something or someone wants you to be living in a way other than what you've set your heart upon? Sometimes it just means that we have to be single-minded and determined, pushing aside all negative thoughts and doubts. At others, though, there's a good reason why we seem to be failing to achieve our destiny - because it's the wrong destiny that we're chasing.
Sometimes we need to stop asking, "Why is this happening to me?" as if to say that everything is going wrong and we surely don't deserve all this stress. We should then instead be asking, "What is all this for?" because there might be a purpose in the way things are going. I was once at a meeting where there was a very good, and extremely funny, talk about someone resisting, fighting, evading, wrestling all that was happening to him until he couldn't escape it anymore. At that point he finally realized that he had 'found God'. Found God? God had found him rather, and wouldn't let the man go until he knew that he had been found.
It's funny that we say that we've found God when he has been working on us almost constantly for perhaps years. Yes, we then realise that God is there with us and has been for a while, because he found us. Maybe, though, you haven't yet 'found God'. But perhaps you know that something is chasing you. Eventually all the pointers and evidence may come together and you will know that he has been following you and now caught you. Saul of Tarsus didn't give in that easily, of course: Jesus had to stand in front of him in a blaze of light and confront him rather embarrasingly in front of his companions (Acts, chapter 9, verses 1 - 9). Let's not get to that point.
Sometimes God is chasing us because we're running from knowing him at all (like Saul); at others he's chasing us because we know him but are running from something that he's asking of us (like Jonah - chapter 1, verses 1 - 3). It's not an uncommon experience, one way or another - in fact so much so, that there's a famous poem about it:
I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat - and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet -
'All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.'
And so it continues and the narrator explores more and more ways to evade God for 176 lines, until finally:
Halts by me that footfall:
Is my gloom, after all,
Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?
'Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He Whom thou seekest!
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me.'
(Francis Thompson, 1890)
If you think that God is chasing you for some reason, I urge you to stop running and listen to him. If you haven't yet found him, then you can read about how to do that here. If you've known him for a while but are resisting him in some way, now is the time to give in. Like Francis Thompson, you will then find that he is good, kind, loving, merciful and gracious.
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