These past 10 years have been marked by God ordained events, a willingness to say yes, slowing down and taking the time to listen, and struggles. Any one of these happening on their own would have been good, but the combination of all these together has led to an exponential impact on all areas of my life.
Two events that stand out to me involve the same man, Greg Bourgond and his Heart of a Warrior ministry. The first happened in the fall of 2003 when I was in his office on a work related matter and he said that he was getting a group of men together for a study and he thought I should be involved. The interesting thing is that I didn’t go to his office that often and the study happened to be starting that night. reflecting back I am reminded of the disciples reaction when Jesus said “follow me.” With little hesitation I said “why not.” Little did I know what would follow. Nine months later I would be done after talking about beliefs, values, worldview, motives, and behaviors. It was the ground work for what I later called my personal life platform. This lead to teaching the material to a number of groups of men and later in a way much life the first, being invited to join Greg as he brought this material to a group of men in Lino Lakes state prison – office, invitation, acceptance, new adventure.
There was a final exam, if you will, to my studies with Greg. This final exam was not part of the curriculum, rather is was given by God. You see shortly after I finished the study I ran in the Twin Cities marathon, 26.2 miles of questioning my sanity for doing such a thing at the age of 44. As tough as the race was the real test came a week or two after the race when I received in the mail a letter for the marathon saying congratulation, hope you enjoyed the race, yada, yada, yads. Behind the letter was a check for $3500 made out to Scott Strand. I thought for a moment that I found my new career, I would be come a professional marathoner. I reasoned that if I could make $3500 finishing in the mid-6000th place I could make a lot more moving up a couple of places. I only thought this for a moment though. You see I some times Google myself to see what the web has to say about me and so I knew that there was another Scott Strand who is a world class marathoner who also happened to run the race and finished in the top 10. I had a friend who asked me earlier if that was me. Leagly, I don’t think the marathon could have done anything to me if I had kept the money and cashed the check. It was made out to me, and there was no indication in the letter or the check on why I received it. I believe it was God testing my integrity, something that I had just spent the last 10 months learning about. I called the marathon, selected what I though was the right person from the phone tree, there were now choices for returning your prize money because it was sent to the wrong person. I told the person who answered who I was and explained what had happened. After a few seconds of silence the person respond with the statement “I’m glad you were an honest person.” Yes, I aced the final, at least for this day. In the end I got a variety of marathon merchandise including a sweatshirt that I joking say cost mey only $3500.
Much of the mid-2000’s was given over to reading, pondering, listening, and reflecting. It was a time when I put into practice a number of spiritual disciplines that help draw me closer to God.
This brings me to the fall of 2007 and a blog posting about a stupid sheep. This is what really got me going with regards to what God has been doing to me, through me, and for me. But the rest of the story will have to wait for part 4.