Almost 15 years ago, Bill Broadhurst entered the Pepsi Challenge 10,000-meter
road race in Omaha, Nebraska. Ten years before that, he had undergone surgery
for an aneurysm in his brain. The surgery left him partially paralysed on the
left side of his body. So, on a misty July morning in 1981, an impaired Bill
Broadhurst stood with 1,200 agile runners at the starting line. The starter's
gun sounded, and the crowd surged forward.
Bill threw his barely responsive left leg forward, pivoted on it as his right
foot hit the pavement, and began his run. By the time he had taken only a few
slow steps forward, the rest of the participants were pulling out of sight.
His slow plop-plop-plop rhythm almost seemed to mock him as the others ran off
from him. Sweat rolled down his face. Pain pierced his ankle. But he kept
moving. One foot awkwardly in front of the other, over and over again.
Six miles and two hours and twenty-nine minutes later, Bill Broadhurst reached
the finish line that day. As he crossed it slowly but triumphantly, a man
approached him from a small group of bystanders still hanging around. Bill
recognized him from newspaper photographs as the world-class marathon runner
Bill Rodgers.
"Here," said Rodgers, as he put his just-won medal for that day's competition
around Bill's neck. "You've worked harder for this than I have."
The Christian race you and I are running is like that one. Others may have speed
and grace I don't. Your pace may be painfully sluggish. Not to worry! All we
need to do is stay on the course. Desire and determination mean more than either
speed or grace in this race.
"Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us" (Hebrews 12:1).
Rubel Shelly The FAX of Life
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