It Ain't Over 'Till It's Over!

I am about as star-struck as any schoolgirl when it comes to figure skating.

To watch, that is. I tried ice-skating last fall and I loved it, but I've got news for you: it isn't as effortless at it looks! Disillusionment aside, my enjoyment in watching this beautiful sport has not diminished. I love watching it every four years when the Winter Olympics roll around.

And I will admit, there is something about the Olympics that strikes a unique cord within me. I can go weeks, months, years without thinking twice about sports of any kind. But let the Olympics come around and I don't limit my range to figure skating. I'll watch any sport that comes up...even the brand-spanking new "snowboard cross" that almost makes me want to hold my breath and turn my head lest someone be killed before my eyes.

No one was killed in the women's "snowboard cross" finals, but I did see something else that I won't be forgetting soon. I watched an American lose the gold. Why? She later explained that she fell losing her balance. At the time, the newscaster assumed that she had become overconfident after gaining a huge leading margin in the race.

Whatever the real explanation of her fall: for me, it was a warning. A warning against complacency in my walk with the Lord.

Sometimes, after I have reached one "milestone" or another in my walk with the Lord, I feel that somehow, in that moment, I have "arrived." I have "beaten" some wrong thought pattern or recurring sin. Or perhaps I have learned something new about God, something even life changing. Maybe I haven't reached the finish line; but I feel that I am at least far enough ahead of where I started that I can relax for a while.

I become complacent and proud.

And then I stumble and fall.

The Christian life has been compared to a race many times. And this week I have seen that as I "press on" towards Christ, it isn't enough to get a good start on a life of godliness. It isn't enough to be godly for a month, or a year, or two years, or ten. It isn't enough to stand on "higher ground" today than I did yesterday.

That is all good--necessary, indeed, for spiritual growth.

But I can't be forgetting...it isn't over until it's over.

"[I speak] not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect...I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded: and if in any thing ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you."
Philippians 3:12-15