It’s great to be back at Lifespring! As many of you know, I took a leave of absence from my duties on staff at the church from May to August in order to work on finishing my dissertation (read about that here: https://www.life-spring.org/making-every-effort/). I can gladly say that I now have just over 175 pages of my dissertation written, out of a total of around 225 pages. I’ll be sending a more detailed update and thank-you to the church family soon, but thought to share in this devotion one of the things that I learned during my time off.
On July 17, we had the privilege of having Donna come and speak to us. One of the things that she mentioned in her message really caught my attention. She was speaking on Genesis 26:22 about Isaac digging out wells in the land where he was staying (listen to that here: https://youtu.be/OzGsm45Q7SQ?t=6458). The word that Donna spoke over our church was that we were to “keep on digging.” Regardless of what was happening around us and the kind of adversity we were facing from the enemy, we were to keep on digging.
One of the reasons that word “keep on digging” caught my attention is because I felt like the past four months have been a season of digging for me. There were a lot of similarities between the idea of digging and working on my dissertation. For one, digging is difficult work. Anyone who has ever tried to dig anything larger than a small hole will know that it takes some effort and strength. Isaac here was digging wells, and you can imagine the amount of effort that took! In the same way, writing my dissertation was tough work for me. I had to organize my whole project into chapters, then work on what each chapter would be about. I had to settle on the flow of each chapter and the kinds of topics I would cover. Then I actually had to write up the project, paragraph by paragraph, page by page. It was tough.
Another thing about digging is the fact that it is repetitive work. A person takes a shovel and smashes it into the ground, breaking new ground with every strike and removing the earth. The first few strikes of digging are the easiest ones, when a person is fresh and has the most energy. But as a person keeps digging, they get more and more tired. The shovel feels heavier and heavier. The sun feels hotter and hotter. That is definitely the way I felt about my dissertation work. I pressed the pause button on other parts of my life so that I could focus on this one project. Day in and day out, I would work on this one thing, and just like digging, it got repetitive and tiring pretty quickly. I would go to sleep thinking about the project, and wake up to work on it again. Day in and day out, rinse and repeat. It was challenging.
Though the last four months were difficult, one of the main things that kept me going was reciting a verse I had memorized some time ago from Hebrews 12 . Verse 1-2 says, “And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.” I was able to run with perseverance and work on my project daily because I felt like I had fixed my eyes on Jesus. I wasn’t writing this dissertation just to get a degree or to accomplish something meaningful in my life. In the end, I was writing this dissertation because I knew that I was running the race that Jesus had marked out for me. At the end of this path was Jesus, and the work on my dissertation was like running toward Jesus. He gave me the grace I needed to continue pressing on when it was most difficult.
Is there a race that God is asking you to run? Is there a place or task where God is asking you to dig? Take those first steps on the journey. Break the earth! Digging is difficult work that takes effort and perseverance. But in the end, God will provide everything that we need to finish well. We just need to keep on digging. Like Donna said, “keep on keeping on!”