If you call our house anytime during the next two weeks, don't be surprised if you get the answering machine. Why, you might ask? Well, duh, the Olympics! If there is laundry to be folded or counters to be cleaned or dinner to be cooked, it will be completed vigorously and with a vengeance while anxiously watching and rooting for Michael or Gabby or Missy or any athlete under the sun whose story we learn and thus admire and cheer on. For many of us, or at least embarrassingly for me, the Olympics brings out the competitiveness/loss of perspective when it comes to sports, on steroids (absolutely no pun intended). I watch gymnastics late into the night and then can't fall asleep for fretting over that fall on the balance beam or that stumble on the vault. Or the swimming, gracious, those hundredths of a second finishes just about undo me as I yell at the TV to "GO GO GO, push it push it." My family has banished me to another room.
But that's okay, because I love it all. Swimming, running, biking, jumping, volleyball... who knows, maybe even fencing this year. I do draw the line at boxing and weightlifting. I girl has to have some standards.
There's just something about watching dedicated athletes who have sacrificed, sweated, trained, worked, focused, and given their all to gain the victor's prize. Or for many, just doing their best, giving their best effort at the ultimate event, the Olympics. How can you not love it?
This morning, though, God reminded me of a very simple lesson: it's not how you start; it's how you finish. I don't know about you, but I'm prone to forget that. (And sometimes especially with my children.) I watched an women's swimming heat (a heat, mind you, not even the final--I can even get worked up and worried over a heat, for pete's sake). The American favorite, and one of the favorites for the race, started out waaaay back. "Come on, " I fussed, "Don't let that German and Chinese and Russian and Australian and who knows who else beat you!" (Like I said, it was not going well at first.) But that was just after the first lap... and then the second. By the third lap, she was at least gaining on them, and by now I'm shouting. "GOOOO! You can do it!!"
Something remarkable happened at the turn on the third lap: she went from about third to first in a manner of moments. And guess what? She cruised to victory--blew everyone away. "USA! USA!" I chanted to Moses. He seemed pretty excited as well, even though I explained to him that this was only a heat. Mercy, I may have to take a sedative before the actual finals.
But amidst my celebrating, the Lord pointed out to me my tendency to forget that it's not over till it's over. That sometimes where we begin, those halting and faltering initial steps, will not be where we finish.
It's not how you start... it's how you finish that matters--in races and in life. With us adults and with our children. Just because we--or they--failed or struggled in the past, doesn't mean that is our, or their, destiny. Sometimes, we just need to keep plugging, keep trying, keep working, and keep trusting that God is not finished with us yet.
Paul put it this way: "And I am sure of this, that He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ." (Phil.1:6) Or "Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; He will surely do it." (I Thess. 5:23-24).
We are His workmanship, and He always always always completes that which He started... not somehow but triumphantly! Our job is to just keep praying, keep trying, keep trusting. He's promised to do the rest. We just have to stay in the race... God will make sure we win it at His appointed end.
And guess what? I've read the end of the story... and it's gonna be great! So keep training and trying and trusting all the way to the finish line. To God--the finisher and perfecter of our faith--be all the glory.
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