Your Race

"...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, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith...."

Hebrews 12:1-2

This is my student and me after our school's 5K fun run. I haven't run a lot, but took it up for the 5K. My student was funny, because he would walk the race until he saw me closing in on him. Then he would sprint enough to make sure I didn't catch up. 

For me, I was thinking about how I didn't have to compete with other people, but only focus on the race marked out for ME... My goal was to run the whole thing, and finish faster than last year. Other people passed me and pushed on for other goals. I was thinking of the metaphor between races and life, and that God doesn't give us all the same race, the same challenges to meet and good works to do. It's been a struggle here, in a community of missionaries, not to compare my life with others in a destructive way. 

I haven't completely figured it out, but I do know that the solution is looking to Jesus, and His work that supplies my righteousness and continues to work righteousness in me. It's not trying to find or make righteousness in myself, which is what I naturally tend to do.