WEEKLY ARTICLE

Canoe Races and the Christian Life

Weekly Article by the Rev. Matt Kennedy

The Church of the Good Shepherd

June 2nd , 2006

This week's article started out as a report for the Update and turned into a brief reflection. Enjoy.

As some of you know, Don, Jake, and Darrell Dean and I took part in the General Clinton Canoe Regatta, a Memorial Day race that begins in Cooperstown and ends in Bainbridge New York. It is a 70 mile race in all. It took us about 12 hours. Jake and Don were in one canoe. Darrell and I in the other.

Last week I bragged that Darrell and I would win by one hour.

Well, it looks like I need to eat my words.

We did come in first, but only by 5 minutes and it was a very, very close race.

After the first 20 or so miles, we were told that Don and Jake were 20 minutes back.

So, thinking we had plenty of distance on them, I started to get comfortable and relax. "Afterall," I thought to myself, "they'd never catch up."

Darrell wasn't so confident and kept chiding me, politely, to get it in gear. And I did speed up a little and then slow down again. Why hurry when we're so far ahead?

Well, guess what.

While I was sitting there rowing half-heatedly thinking about what a nice day it was, Don and Jake were pushing themselves all out. They skipped their pit-stops and took no breaks.

By mile 50, I was thinking we had increased our lead, when in fact, they were directly behind us. Darrell and I heard some shouting and we turned around and sure enough, there they were and they were about to pass.

The final twenty miles are seared painfully into my memory. They were grueling. Darrell and I managed to pull it together and cross the finish line first, but it was very hard and very close.

Darrell was right. I should have kept pushing myself

Jake especially should be congratulated. To decide to push for the lead when you are twenty minutes behind and fifty miles to go and already exhausted takes a lot of heart and a lot of fire.

There is definitely a lesson to be learned here.

The Christian life is not a sprint. It's a an endurance race and not against your brothers and sisters, but against yourself, your old nature, the temptation to slack off on your daily prayer time with God and daily time in the word; to slack off when it comes to group bible study and Sunday worship, to slack off when it comes to the way you live your life and to stop earnestly seeking Christ.

When that happens, old habits, old ways of thinking and living sneak up on you.

The Holy Spirit gives you the strength to run the race without slacking, but you and I have to make the decision to push hard to reach the goal.

God gives us polite and not so polite nudges along the way. But we have to make the decision to commit or not to commit. To dedicate our lives wholly to Christ or to take it easy and let the current of our old, fallen, desires take us where it will.

Tom Landry once said that a coach's job is to push people to do what they don't want to do so that they can be what they've always wanted to be.

AS believers we want to have joy, peace, love, and security. We want a deep and abiding relationship with Jesus Christ. To achieve that takes work. It means pushing ourselves to do what we don't always want to do.

But in the end, discipline always pays off.

God always works in and through your work and crowns your efforts with his blessings. So commit your way to the Lord and seek him diligently. Wisdom, fruitfulness, peace, joy, and increasing strength will be your reward.

In any case, it was a great Memorial Day. I'm still recovering, but I really thank God for the lessons learned.

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