GET UP AND KEEP GOING!

Recently, I watched part of the “Giro d'Italia 2012”. In the race that I watched, American Taylor Phinney crash his bike, having touched wheels and losing his balance. And then he hit a mechanical problem with 8km still to go; he couldn’t get his chain back on his bike.  Quickly his team mechanics came to his aid and made the necessary repairs. 

To me, it looked as though Taylor didn’t have a chance to win the race because he was still way out of the front of the pack. But because Taylor was on a team, he was quickly joined by team mates Danilo Wyss and Alessandro Ballan who managed to pace him back to the back of the bunch with 4km left to go. What were the results of the race? He kept his first place standing and the coveted pink jersey.  

On the following day, The New York Rangers were 6.6 seconds from losing Game 5 of their Eastern Conference Semifinal series against the Washington Capitals. However, as a team, they rallied and beat the Capitals in OT. Brad Richards scored in the final seconds of regulation to send the game to overtime. And then Marc Staal won it less than a minute and a half into the extra period to give the Rangers a come-from-behind 3-2 victory against the Caps.

This is the same New York Rangers who as a team won 2-1 in triple-overtime in Game 3 four days earlier. It was the NHL's longest game in nearly four years.  

You win as a team, you lose as a team; PERIOD! 

All of us are called to get up and keep running; the goal being to reach the finish line. Hobble if you have to, but continue you must to run your race, do your part. We are in this together! We are part of a team! In the Bible, the Apostle Paul calls the team; “A great a cloud of witnesses.” 

Keep running; we all have another lap to go! 

“Do you see what this means—all these pioneers who blazed the way, all these veterans cheering us on? It means we'd better get on with it. Strip down, start running—and never quit! No extra spiritual fat, no parasitic sins. Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we're in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed—that exhilarating finish in and with God—he could put up with anything along the way: Cross, shame, whatever. And now he's there, in the place of honor, right alongside God. When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he plowed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls!” 

-(Hebrews 12:1-3 from The Message Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson)