Week 46 | Run Your Own Race

Run your own race, and run it the best you can.

Everybody is running their own race, and comparison is the thief of all joy.

I once heard a low-major, D1 basketball coach tell the story of a kid on his team who was one of the top ranked 8^th graders in the country when he was 14 years old. This was the kids 3^rd or 4^th college team, and according to the coach, the kid had so much success so early that he never really learned how to manage adversity.

On the other hand, there are 100s of college athletes who were late bloomers and were never close to being ranked in middle school who find a lot of success at the college level.

Everybody is running their own race.

Athletes start their sports journeys at different times, for different reasons, and with different abilities. Some athletes hit the ground running and find success early, and some don’t find success until they have put years of work in. Some athletes are stars when they are younger and fizzle out when puberty hits, and some don’t find their way in the sports world until they hit high school or even later.

Basketball star Azzi Fudd became the first sophomore to win the Gatorade Player of the Year and was the number one recruit in her class, but according to her mom, when she first started playing basketball, she was terrible. But she worked hard, had a plan, stuck to the plan, and went on to start at the University of Connecticut, passing up all of the prodigies around her who had an earlier and faster start.

All we can do is control what we can control, do the best we can, and maximize and take advantage of the opportunities as they come, while enjoying the process. We reap what we sow over time, and the harder the work and the more we invest, the more we will get out of our experience.

As I am reading through the book of Matthew, I see comparisons between the journey of an athlete and the Parable of the Workers.

In the Parable, a landowner hires men to work on his vineyard. They come in at different hours of the day, the first workers coming in at 9 in the morning, and the last group coming in at 5 in the afternoon.

When it was time for them to get paid, the landowner paid the latest workers first, and he paid them all equally. When he paid the first workers hired last, and when the first workers realized that they worked the longest but got paid last and an equal amount as everyone else, they got upset and grumbled with the landowner.

When they said to the landowner, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat,’ the landowner replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’

So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

This parable shows that even the people who come to Christianity later in life will earn the same rewards that people who came early earn, as long as they are willing to do and put in the work.

This also teaches us to not be boastful or prideful because we got an early start on someone else. God gives different opportunities to different people and at different times. All we can do is show up ready to work and believe when our time is called, accept the rewards that He gives us, and be happy for others on the same journey as us.

Stay humble. Work hard. Be thankful for the rewards you earn.

THIS WEEK

1 – What race are you running? What do you hope to get out of playing sports?

2 – What is one thing you need to keep doing on your race?

3 – What is one thing you need to stop doing or that is holding you back?

4 – Who is one person that you can encourage to keep running their race this week, and how can you encourage them?

For a Google doc version of this devo, click here: Run Your Own Race