Rowing Upstream

Each of us faces a new challenge each day. Sometimes it’s big and complicated, sometimes it’s small and effortlessly solvable. Sometimes it’s a huge and heavy cross, yet sometimes it’s a light and bearable stake. God told us to carry our cross each day. I think he wants it to mean that we need to face each of our challenges each day, not to put them off until tomorrow.

You see, if you keep on putting off the challenges until tomorrow you begin to pile them up. As you keep piling them up, one day you will just find yourself surrounded by a thousand crosses, you will find yourself in the middle of a thousand challenges. God told us to carry a cross each day not to carry a heap of them. I believe there is real wisdom in carrying our crosses each day. It is facing challenges one day at a time. We can end the day by looking back at the challenges we have faced, at the crosses we bore. Then we can look at ourselves in the mirror and discover that we have become stronger because of the cross we carried during the day.

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Learning is like rowing upstream:
not to advance is to drop back.
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Of course you can say that the challenge I am facing now cannot compare to the hard challenges you face each day. But I think what is more important is not how huge or how small the challenges that come our way but how we react to them. Some people get stressed over not having the right make up. Yet there are also some people who are not disturbed at the death of their parents. I think another important thing to keep in mind is that we are never alone. We face many diverse challenges, but we never face them alone. We have always God with us. When God said that we should carry our cross each day, he also said somewhere that he is always with us until the end of time. How wonderful it is to be certain that tomorrow’s cross will be bearable because God will be there ahead of us, waiting for us, knowing that we need him every step of the way.

There is a Chinese proverb that says, “Learning is like rowing upstream: not to advance is to drop back.” How appropriate for my current experience. I really feel like I am rowing upstream, and I feel the pressure of keeping up. Amidst engulfing pressures, what keeps me going is the goal that I have set for myself and my conviction that God is with me all the way. And I guess this is what really matters in the end: to realize our own goals and to live a life pleasing to God. Without goals to reach for, life has no direction. Without God, life would have no meaning.

But if we have goals to strive for, even our mistakes and failures make sense. No person has ever suffered when s/he goes in search of her/his dream because every moment of the search is a step closer to realization. That is why we all need to set goals for ourselves. And we need to make these goals our personal treasure. We have to find our personal treasure, so that every mistake that we have made, every failure that we have faced, and everything that we have learned along the way can make sense.

God is with you no matter what. Never stop dreaming. Keep rowing upstream.