I used to play high-school hockey with an all-star skater who could zig-zag his way up the ice.  Opponents would try to check him or lift his stick off the puck to no avail. The guy was incredible, but he refused to pass the puck to his wide-open teammates.  We called it hot-dogging and it usually ended with no goal.

And no pun intended, but the goal of hockey is to score goals.  As the season wore on, the coach played this kid less and less because he had lost sight of the goal.

As we zig and zag through our lives, we too have plenty of things checking us, trying to keep us from our goal.  Sometimes we forget that God is wide open as we forge ahead, often losing sight of our real goals in life – and more pointedly, our goals with God.

Psalm 136 begins with, “Give praise to the Lord for He is good. His love endures forever!”  Then, for 26 stanzas the psalmist gives us a theological history of God’s interactions with his people and each stanza ends with the same praise, “His love endures forever!”

I imagine that around 3000 years ago, the author of this Psalm looked at the magnificent, giant stone walls of Jerusalem and reminisced how far his people had come; all the way from slavery to glory – and how God was with them every step of the way.

So what about us?  We’ve seen way more than giant stone walls…. We’ve seen more of God’s amazing love than the author of Psalm 136 could ever imagine.   We’ve experienced the grace of our creator God, who loved us so much, that he sent his son to die for us in order to set us free!  Truly we have seen how “His love endures forever.”

Let’s remember our ultimate goal and pray:  Dear Jesus, our Lord and Savior thank you for loving us.  Your love endures forever!  Dear Jesus, thank you for dying for us.  Your love endures forever!  Dear Jesus, thank you for walking out of that grave and leading us to eternal life with you.  Your love endures forever!

Through life’s zig, zags and all the checks that try to stop us, remember that God is wide open.  He loves when our goals are in sync with his!