Somehow, even though I’ve never played football, I ended up in a weight lifting class with the all the starters on the varsity football team my freshman year of High School. I was the smallest, slowest, whitest, least athletic student in the class. My bench press max was in the bottom ten percentile, right along with my squat max, 40 time, and vertical jump.
Obviously, this class provided a real boost to my teenage self-esteem.
I remember the first day Coach Miller took us out to time our 2 mile run. And, since I had thus far proven to be an extremely slow runner, I was expecting more of the same results I had produced all year: I’d come in close to dead last.
So, I took off with the other guys, and sure enough they blazed past me.
On the first lap.
But by lap 4, I noticed one of the defensive backs enjoying an unplanned timeout to vomit and regroup while kneeling on the side of the track. This made me happy, because he laughed at me when he lapped me on lap 2. I would have taken the opportunity to laugh at him, but he was a really big dude. So I chuckled inside and kept running.
I never achieved a very fast pace, but I kept running. Steady. Like the tortoise, you know? And guess what?
I was one of the first to finish.
It wasn’t pretty, but I kept running.
I wasn’t graceful, but I was steady.
My start was unimpressive, but my finish was strong.
And it turns out that in the 2 mile run, it’s not how fast you start, but how strong you finish that counts.
Maybe you’re discouraged today because when it comes to your specific skill set, you’re not strong, fast, or flashy. Perhaps you’ve never made a Most Innovative Ministries or Fastest Growing Whatever list. Your numbers and results aren’t getting anyone’s attention and you feel little, lonely, and limited when you compare yourself to your peers.
I have a feeling that when we stand before Jesus one day, some of the gold medals and designer crowns will be given to good men and women who just kept a steady pace and stayed in the race.
Keep running. Finish strong.