Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: SPRING (09/03/20)
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TITLE: Race to the Sky | Previous Challenge Entry
By Francie Snell
09/10/20 -
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'Do you not know that in a race all runners run their very best to win, but only one receives the prize. Run your race in such a way that you may seize the prize and make it yours!'
1 Corinthians 9:24
Hands on her hips, she eyed the other contestants. All with formidable physiques, her competitors were disciplined and well trained. For this was no ordinary marathon. Only a chosen few were invited to compete in this annual event against each other and the mountain.
Adrenaline coursed through her veins.
Long grueling hours of self-inflicted exercise accompanied by pain and sweat prepared her only partially for this day. The track was like nothing she had competed on before. Starting at 5000 feet elevation, it would be nothing but uphill from there.
Her starting block was a granite rock with a flat side angled at 45 degrees with the event Race to the SKY, the date, and her name Sara Sanders chiseled on it. A memento of the journey ahead. She had worked diligently to prepare. The rest was up to God.
Sarah’s heart fluttered as the ten runners placed their feet on the designated starting blocks and the announcer called out to begin. The starter yelled. “Ready - on your mark - get set,” and shot his pistol into the air. As the shot rang through the forest, feet bounded off the rocks, and off onto the trail, the runners went.
After three miles, they entered a clearing where the sun beat down from high in the sky. Sarah pumped her arms with every step and paced her breathing. She dashed across the meadow with long strides until she came to a log fallen across the path. Two by two, all the runners leaped over it and splashed into a trickling brook on the other side. The runner beside her launched ahead and took the lead. Sara sped off after her.
At the end of the clearing, the trail turned back into the forest, where scant rays of light speckled the forest floor. Like deer, the athletes sprang over logs and ruts and jagged around boulders as they climbed higher.
The sun seemed hotter as the runners dashed along a narrow plateau that stretched across the crest of a mountain one by one. Above the tree line, Sarah’s lungs burned as she fought for air. She glanced over the rigid cliff at the canyon below, like an eagle soaring high above the earth. She remembered…
'...They will lift up their wings like eagles; They will run and not become weary...' Isaiah 31
Heart pounding, sweat dripping, eyes stinging with salty sweat, her thighs ached as she clambered up a rocky slope. At the top, she slowed to catch her breath as another runner suddenly flew past. Now, third in line, she committed to regaining first place position as she sped after the other runner.
Just a few more miles.
'I press on toward the goal to win the heavenly prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.' Philippians 3:14
In a high meadow at ten thousand feet, the race seemed to become amazingly effortless, her prayers more focused as she leaped like a gazelle over another log. She hung in space weightless as if a mighty hand held her. And as she continued on, her competitors all slowed to a jog. There can only be one winner, she decided as she rallied with one last spurt of energy past the two runners.
Throwing her hands to the sky in victory, she realized she hadn’t run the race alone; the Lord was with her in every step, in every leap, in every trip, and every spring.
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