I look at life like a huge track meet and some of us are given an unchosen lane assignment to start. Let’s take a look for example at the 400-meter event. Or, to phrase it better, “The come to Jesus race!”
There’s nothing like the 400 to me. The real soul of a person comes out when you get to about 250 to 300 meters. I’ve seen gorillas jump out of trees at this point on the track and grab the souls of many runners and hitch a ride until the race is over.
A novice 400-meter runner doesn’t understand the build-up and pace to the race. If you press too hard too early, the gorilla will jump on your back. You’ll witness a ride for the ages in that runner. You’ll see the slowdown, the jelly legs, and an all-out attempt to survive. The ability to get a preferred lane assignment is a good thing to some.
As an old track coach conveyed to me, “the preferable lane in the 400 is the middle of the track or inside lanes. Lane 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 as opposed to 7 or 8 so you can see the competition.”
But what about those that don’t have a choice and end up in lane 7 or 8? The old track coach told me, “the best thing to do is get out and run try to keep the stagger until the 300 meter. At this point things tend to even out BUT you have to keep the pace.”
We’re not always graced with the benefit of the greatest lane assignment and start but we can control how this race can be run. Notice that if life’s lane assignments put us on the outside looking in, our responsibility is to keep the pace. Keeping the pace is not to keep up or compete with others but to briskly and enthusiastically get up and keep pressing towards the mark. Specifically, we have to own the lane we’re in while we’re in it and run until God promotes us to another place on life’s track.
Hebrews 12:1
Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,
There’s a strategy to running life’s race. No matter the lane assignment, with God, you’re never at a disadvantage. Your progress in your lane is what makes the testimony so powerful. Sure your lane 7 or 8 start may require you to keep a vigorous pace, but His strength in you allows you to overcome things that someone not intended to be in your lane couldn’t fathom. There’s a reason you were given your start. Go run your race!