Paul wrote in Philippians 3:12-14, and I am paraphrasing some here, he said, “I don’t mean that I am exactly what God wants me to be, I have not yet reached that goal. But I continue trying to reach it. That’s what Christ Jesus wants me to do. He wants me to be like Him in my actions, in my words, in my thoughts, and in my witness. Brothers and sisters, I know that I still have a long way to go. But there is one thing I do: I forget what is in the past and try as hard as I can to reach the goal before me. I keep running hard towards the finish line to get the prize that is mine because God has called me through Christ Jesus to His heavenly home.”
Paul is talking as though he is a runner, running to win a race. I once thought, when I was in high school, that I would join the school track team. Oh, I didn’t want to be a runner for the short distances, such as the fifty or the hundred yard dash, or even the race in which you hand off the baton to the runner ahead of you, although, maybe I could have run that race. It’s for only a short distance, you know. Instead, I thought about being a long-distance runner, you know, being the guy who had to pace himself so as to not get too winded or too tired so he could win the race he was running. This is the kind of race that Paul was talking about, being a marathon runner.
Of course anyone who knows me would just laugh even at that thought! My mother used to tell me that I was so slow that even she could outrun me in a race! I told her, “No way!” But I’m glad that we never ran that race, she might have won! After all, she was a basketball star in her day!
