Life's Race (No exercise involved)

Running. It may be a sport (one I participate in, actually), but running can be applied to something greater than athletic clothes and running shoes. That's right, I'm not talking about the kind of running you do so that you can eat that doughnut later today, I'm talking about the kind of running we do in life.

Here's an analogy to get things up and running (punny, right?). So you’re going to go run a 5k, and you’re so excited! I know, some of you are thinking, ‘Me? Run? Puh-lease. I would rather walk on coals.’ but stick with me here. You start to follow the crowd into position, and the gun goes off, and you start to run. You’re feeling really good in the beginning, which is awesome because you never actually trained for the race. However, you soon start to wear down, and you’re getting really, really tired. Shouldn’t this race be over already? You ask one of the helpers how much farther I have to go and they say, “You’ve already run 5 miles, so you have about 8 miles left to go.”*  That’s when you realize you’ve been running the wrong race THIS ENTIRE TIME.

Think about this! You were running the wrong race the whole time. Life is almost like a race, sometimes we just follow the crowd into position, and start running down the wrong path. Because, unfortunately, we can’t always differentiate between right and wrong, sometimes, we start running a race without even knowing what we have gotten ourselves into. This is important. In life, we run after empty things like money, fame, and attention. We all have a longing that needs to be fulfilled, and we all have a God-sized hole in our hearts. Which, shocker, can only be filled by God!!! Lucky for us, God tells us to run to Him!

Here is what the Bible says about running:

Hebrews 12:1-3

1 Corinthians 9:24-27

Isaiah 40:31

* If you don’t know, a 5k is about 3.1 miles, the 13 miles described above account for the amount of a half marathon.