Everybody, Always

stadium gasped. Lex missed the sandpit entirely and crashed and burned
on the concrete. Lex’s friend put his hands over his head in disbelief at
what had just happened as he ran to his friend’s side. Lex was badly
bruised, his track uniform was ripped, and he was helped off the field for
medical attention.
We’re all a little blind and have a tendency to wander. Sometimes we
know what caused us to stop running in a straight line, and other times we
don’t. We crash and burn and usually don’t know what happened. It’s
what happens next that will tell a lot about who we’re becoming.
I’m no athlete, but if I were Lex, I would have been tempted to quit. I
would have thought about how unfair my life was. I’d complain to myself
about how I’d jumped far and hit hard. I might be afraid if it happened
once, it might happen again. These are the voices of defeat each of us
hears at some point. If we let them, these dissonant voices can drown out
the voices we’ve come to trust in our lives. Lex doesn’t see the world this
way. His faith doesn’t just inform his heart; it informs his whole life.
Lex’s friend got him a new uniform so he didn’t moon everyone, and
Lex walked back onto the field to thunderous applause. Together, they
walked to the end of the narrow runway. There’s a saying in track: “Last
one, best one.” His friend squared Lex’s shoulders and his feet once
again, walked to the edge of the sand pit, and called, “Fly! Fly! Fly!” as
he clapped faster and faster. When Lex hit the board on his sixteenth step,
he leaped into the air like a gazelle. When he hit the sand more than
twenty-one feet later, he won the whole competition. Sure, he’d strayed a
little from the path before. He’d even crashed the last time he’d tried, but
Lex doesn’t let fear call the shots in his life, and we shouldn’t either.
We’ve all jumped for something we couldn’t see. A relationship, a
career, even our faith. We’ve all been beat up too. We’ve jumped big and
missed even bigger. We aim for the soft sand but hit the hard stuff.
Here’s the thing: God doesn’t like us more when we succeed or less when
we fail. He delights in our attempts. He gave each of us different abilities
too. I can’t jump over a street curb. Lex can leap over a Buick.