The other day, I was at one of Jamie’s track meets. All day long there were a variety of races. At these track meets, I will generally stand against the fence around the track, waiting on my daughter’s race. The time came for the 100 meter, varsity boys’ run. This is always interesting. These guys are generally very fast. The runners got in their respective lanes. The starter raised his hand with the pistol in the air. “On your mark, get set, go!” One young man apparently jumped to soon. As soon as the gun fired, the starter then quickly fired again—signal for a “false start.” When that happens, all of the runners are to stop and then go back to their starting positions. All of them did–except for one young runner in a maroon uniform. He continued running. I cringed with embarassment for him. I heard someone say, “Oh no, he’s still running! How embarassing!” He ran by himself the entire race, not realizing that he was the only one running. Finally he raised his arms as he crossed the finish line, thinking that he had won the race. He then turned around only to realize that no one else had been running with him.
I can’t imagine. The stands were full of people. 14 or 15 schools were present. People from everywhere were watching and everybody saw this kid run a race by himself.
Do you ever feel like that is you? Do you ever feel like you are alone in your race? Christian people are in a race. Life is a life long marathon. The goal is not speed but endurance. We just want to finish–strong. But it is awfully difficult to do this by yourself.
There are times when I have felt like I was running by myself. You know the feeling. You wrestle with a matter and you want to do the right thing. But it seems like that you are the only one wrestling with the decision. Others either rationalize the situation or just follow their own desires.
The truth is–we were never meant to run this by ourselves. Life is tough–at times it is extremely tough. How encouraging it is to know that you are not running alone. Are you making sure that you are running with other people?