Practice Run (06/21/2026)

Yesterday, after breakfast, my husband and I made a practice run to a wedding venue and a church in another county in preparation for our grandson’s wedding. He’s been asked to drive the bride on the special day to the church. We wanted to drive the route, make note of the time needed between home and venue and venue and church. Life has a way of dealing out surprises, so we were trying to minimize the number of surprises that day. Then we stopped at a local bistro and celebrated a successful practice run with a delicious lunch.

Practice runs are intended to build familiarity with a procedure or a route. Our little excursion did just that. We identified landmarks near turns, highway changes, and even found little communities along the way we didn’t know existed. We didn’t see any potential problems for the big day. However, we did encounter a “bike ride” with hundreds of bikers sharing the roads with us. Hopefully that won’t happen the day of the big event. But if it should, we’ve got experience to help us.

Our days this side of the sod are like practice runs. We need to show up, and we need to learn from our experiences. That’s where pondering comes into play. At the end of the day, it helps us pilgrims to take a bit of time to recall the day’s journey, to make note of difficulties we encountered as well as blessings we received, and to wring the divinely intended lessons from each. Without pondering, we can show up for the events but truly miss the experiences. And truth be known, I often discover great surprises in the rear-view mirror that I never saw through the windshield as I whizzed along. Put another way, sometimes it is only in looking back and pondering that we see things we missed earlier.

Our lives, our journeys, they aren’t “practice runs.” They are the real deal. But we can learn from every step, every moment, every encounter, every mile. Doesn’t it make sense to use what we have been given today to improve tomorrow? May we spend time pondering our experiences prayerfully, seeking the LORD’s help in making sense of it and in gleaning the experiences we need for tomorrow.

Until tomorrow, let us all love well.