Bloom Where Your planted....

Several years ago, I told you a story about one of my all-time favorite people. Not that I know her, or have even met her. But I admire her. Because one day, at age 42, in beautiful downtown Cleveland, she ran a marathon by accident (all 26 miles, 385 yards of it). Her name was Georgene Johnson. Still is. As you will recall, she lined up with the wrong group at the starting line. Not the 10K group, where she belonged. But the 26 mile group, where she didn't. It wasn't until the four mile mark that she realized her mistake. So she just kept going, finishing the race in four hours and four minutes. But it's what she said later (by way of explanation) that has stayed with me since. Said Georgene: "This isn't the race I trained for. This isn't the race I entered. But, for better or worse, this is the race I'm in."

I still finished...

In 1968, in the Mexico City Olympics, John Steven Aquari from Tanzania, set out for hopes of an Olympic Gold in the marathon race. Sadly, for him and his country, midway through the race, he had a horrible accident. Falling to the ground, gashing his knee wide open and dislocating his knee from the joint, certainly keeping him from finishing the race. Well, all of the other runners left him behind and eventually entered into the stadium for the final lap. Over an hour after the race had been run and all of the other runners had already completed, John Steven Aquari shocked the world. When the stadium was mostly empty, this very injured runner, hobbled into the stadium limping and fighting his way to the finishing line. Leg wrapped with a little towel, with blood running down, he finished a race that virtually everyone else would have quit. That's what we are going to do, because we have unfinished business. And God is calling us to finish the race. After the race was won, the interviewers asked John, "Why did you do that when no one else would have?" And John said, "My country did not send me 5,000 miles to start a race, but they sent me 5,000 miles to finish it.
God did not send you to earth to start a race, He sent you here to finish it. Commit, take the step and finish. Our life is not about us. This is what Paul said in Acts 20:24 - I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task...."