Pushing Forward - Life Lessons, part 2

To read part 1, click here.
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But that was impossible. I’d come too far for that. You can’t just quit a race before it’s over. Even if you do, you can’t go back to the starting line for a do-over. Things are moving forward with or without you. My comfortable past was gone, my future unknown. And I’m doubled over on the side of the road, just trying to catch my breath and figure out how I got here in the first place.

Paul likes to reference racing and training in his letters to the early Christians. (Maybe he was one of those athletes in the early Roman games who wore white bed sheets and put green shrubs in his hair.) In 1 Corinthians 9 he writes:

“Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. …I do not run like a man running aimlessly…I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.”

Again in Philippians 3 he writes:

“Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”

As I’m standing on the side of the road, doubled over and out of breath, wanting to turn around and go back but knowing the finish line is in front of me, I’m forced to make a choice. Not just the choice of whether or not to finish my race. But the choice of how I’m going to run. Am I going to simply stumble forward until I’m done? Or am I going to pick myself up and run my socks off because I want the prize that’s waiting at the end?

I can tell you which approach is easier. And I can also tell you that I’m not going to be the first one to cross the finish line. No way. Just because I run doesn’t make me a runner. But that’s not the point.

The point is how we finish.
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Keep comin' back - it ain't over yet!