The Race

I love the analogies we find in the Bible of life being a race.

2Timothy 4: 7
I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

Hebrews 12:1
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.


The idea that we need to train in order to do well and that we are passing on the baton to the next generation and to others around us. As the analogy of the baton is used I often picture athletes running around a nice oval running track with the crowd cheering and the finish line in sight.
The race that I seem to be on, and hearing others talk I don’t appear to be alone, is more like an obstacle course. I seem to get myself in a complete mess, can’t always see where I’m going, sometimes lose the baton completely in the mud and generally end up exhausted having gotten no-where.

There is a nice straight and clean path running alongside the obstacle course and I look longingly at those that walk that path. They seem to be getting along much better. They are clean, focussed and their baton is gleaming. However, I don’t feel God is asking me to join that path, not for the moment anyway. For this obstacle course is part of God’s training in my life. He calls me to attempt great things for him, and some of these obstacles are great to me.
I love the story of the man who was asked by God to try and move this enormous boulder. Each day the man went out and put all his strength into pushing the boulder. However hard he tried he could not move it, not even an inch. Day by day he went out to try and move this boulder with no success. Days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months. Eventually he had to admit defeat and went to God, his head hanging low. He told God that he had failed and had not even managed to move the boulder at all. God replied, “You have not failed, I did not ask you to move the boulder, only to try and move the boulder. Look at your arms and your legs, how strong they are. I have been training you for what I have in store for you.

Sometimes God calls us to perform what look like fruitless tasks. Is he training us up for the future? Is he helping us to be faithful in the small things so that we can be found faithful in the big things?
In my life on the obstacle course there are things that I seem called to do that I don’t understand. Yet in doing them God has been training me. However, just as in parenting, we need to be wise to pick our battles. Some obstacles in our path will test us and make us fitter and more useful to God. Others though will distract us, use up our time and energies and in the end keep us from doing what God desires of us. We need the wisdom to know which obstacles to tackle and when to quietly step off the course onto that long straight path alongside it.