“When I fall, I shall arise.” Micah 7:8b (KJV)
It doesn’t take courage to run the race you know you will win. It takes courage to run the race you know you can’t win.
When my daughter, Storm, was in school she joined the track team. She was small for her age and she had asthma. She would enter every event and she always came in last . . . and not just “last,” but sometimes minutes behind the winner. At times it was painful to watch her struggling to cross the finish line when every breath was an effort.
At one event she was so far behind that the race was not just “over”—people were leaving the bleachers and headed toward their cars before she crossed the finish line. The only people there to cheer for her were her family and the coach.
She ran the race she knew she couldn’t win, but she ran anyway and she always finished the race.
She never felt shame or regret; she never felt she had to apologize or explain why she kept running; she never dropped out or quit the team. She would shrug off the loss and say, “Someone has to win the race and someone has to come in last. If I didn’t come in last, someone else would be last, and maybe they would feel badly about it. But I don’t feel bad. For me, it is enough to just run and feel the wind in my face and my hair and my sneakers hitting the track. That’s enough.”
Eventually, Storm graduated from university and traveled the world, and every night she runs a mile in a park for the joy of running.
Lord, remind me that I don’t have to win worldly races, or even worldly prizes. You love me just as I am.
– Crying Wind
Council Fire is a collaboration with Intertribal Life Ministries and Native Evangelical Fellowship of Canada.
The Council Fire Daily Devotional Book Set is available on the Intertribal Life Ministries website.
Learn more about Council Fire at councilfire365.org