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It is not all about the premiums…
March 8, 2025
Isaiah 58:9b-14 | Luke 5:27-32 | Psalm 86:1-11
Faith is a person-centered process that is experienced differently by all. I, like many of us, look at the rewards before going back to the task requirements for said rewards. For example, my wife and I enjoy the premiums (I used to call them gimme’s or freebies until I started volunteering at the HOCR) offered at the Head of the Charles regatta. They are quite useful and expensive pieces of clothing that also become a conversation piece with people familiar with the sport. They can also be in high demand by some participants as they want a unique and exclusive momento of their race day and are very willing to part with some cash to get it. Yet this premium (freebie) is not so free. It is earned with quite a few hours, regardless of weather conditions, in various designated tasks. They can range from garbage placement and monitoring, hosting judges, VIPs, handing out premiums or trophies. For us it has always been as official cyclist which allows us to enter the boathouses that line up the sides of the Charles River to meet with the judges to pick up penalties and deliver them to the Adjudication Center. One the best things I can say about the clothing sponsors is they are much better at predicting the weather. Whether sunny, cold, windy, and of course torrential rains, they have always managed to dress us in the proper expensive (believe me I checked prices at their event shops) attire for the weekend. So after reading this you may be wondering to yourself “why am I reading about Geo’s clothing obsession?” well here it goes…
In all the readings that I was tasked with, Isaiah 58:9b14 spoke to me in such a way that it would not leave me alone. It asked something of me and spoke of the premiums I would receive for following God’s word and example. But the passage that has put me to the test in it is Isaiah’ first 6 lines.
“If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.”
The Lord has repeatedly asked this from me in so many ways, but maybe I was just too dense to get it, that the Lord had to encourage me to participate with premiums? This ask is so simple that it should be the way we conduct ourselves daily. But alas this request keeps getting muddled by friends, family and lastly even people of the cloth. But the ask in recent times has become more of a plea. Can it be really be that hard to meet this expectation? I know that in the rhythm and the rush that moves the world today we barely have time to catch our breath. So maybe in an oxymoron we must become selfish in our quest to serve God and our fellow travelers to be that light, a coat, that meal, or that pillar to hold on to when the storms blow hard. So, like I make time for the HOCR I must make time to embody those six lines. Because In the end the premiums are not the reason we keep volunteering. It is the knowledge that we helped athletes and spectators create a memory that will go with them regardless whether they knew we were there, or not. To know that when you embody those six lines you are walking the path that Jesus laid out and in the moment you see their relief, satisfy their hunger or acknowledge, and protected them regardless of expectation of reward, that your light shall rise.
Geo Borgia
