For Wilshire Baptist Church
Watching the Olympics over the weekend, I saw several false starts in the heats and final for the men’s 100-meter run. In every case the runner knew immediately what had happened: In a split second — quite literally 0.1 second — years of training and dreaming were lost. There was no complaining or negotiating with technology that measures foot pressure on starting blocks. The runner was escorted away from the track and off the world stage.
It’s brutal when you think about it. These false starts were not cheats; they were an anticipatory jump ahead. All that energy, all that preparation, all that coiled-up get-up-and-go just got up and went a split second too soon. For these athletes, the event was over. Depending on their age, there might be other chances at world championships and Olympic medals, but for some, that premature burst of competitive energy may have been their last.
I’ve never been in that situation, never been under that kind of dual pressure where it’s now or never but you better not jump the gun. I’ve had plenty of bad starts just the same: not being prepared, not taking something seriously, stumbling out of the blocks, going the wrong way, starting too late. Probably the last time I ran an all-out sprint was in college when I overslept the starting gun for an art history final and ran from my dorm to the classroom. This was pre-digital days and the professor wasn’t going to restart the slide show test for one sleepy-headed student. I had to restudy — retrain as it were — and take the final the following semester.
I recovered, and so do most of us when we get off to a bad start. Sometimes having to start over provides a chance to plan better and get our priorities in order. Sometimes it sends us off in a fresh new direction. It may even prompt us to stop relying on our mistaken notion of our independence and superiority and lean on others. Maybe we discover that the best other we can have on our team is God.
In Proverbs 3 we read these familiar words:
Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
and do not rely on your own insight.
In all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make straight your paths.
We may start poorly and there may be hurdles along the way. We may have a false start, but with God’s help we can have a good, true finish.