THE RACE - CHEERED ON BY BIBLICAL TEENS | Previous Challenge Entry

how it works

TITLE: THE RACE - CHEERED ON BY BIBLICAL TEENS | Previous Challenge Entry
By Margaret Kearley
07/23/09
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THE RACE – CHEERED ON BY BIBLICAL TEENS

I can feel unnumbered witnesses
Surround me like a cloud,
Encouraging and challenging
They cheer loud from the crowd,
Reminding me how they once ran
And stood up for the truth,
Remembering their Creator
In the past days of their youth.

I can’t begin to realise
The fear there must have been ,
To experience what Joseph did
When he was just seventeen.
So hated by his brothers,
Rejected, a misfit,
Knowing that they wished him dead,
He languished in a pit.
Then sold, enslaved, and frightened
As to Egypt his steps trod,
He surely must have wondered
Where, in all of this, was God?
My race also has questions
I’d ask if I just could.
But I learn from Joseph’s story
How God worked it all for good.

Sometimes my race is lonely,
And I feel I run alone,
Removed from friends and family,
Outside my comfort zone.
So I turn and look into a face
I know would understand,
An Israel girl enslaved alone
In a far off foreign land.
Her tale of willing service
To Naaman and his wife,
Her love for God, her witness,
Is a challenge to my life.
Her faith in God the forefront
That kept her from despair
Reminds me in the loneliest time:
My God is always there.

If tempted to desert the race
Through weariness and fears,
Or mocking opposition
And pressure from my peers.
I look at a young Daniel
And learn from his lifestyle
Of trusting faith and prayerfulness.
Resolved not to defile
Himself with gluttonous excess
His dietary restriction
Displayed with startling clarity
His courage of conviction.
Lord, help me run like Daniel did
And give you all my youth
In firm determination
To stand strong for your truth.

A young girl, pure and chosen,
Marked out by God to be
The mother of the Saviour.
Obediently Mary
With trust fully accepted
And yielded to God’s plan
To carry, bear and nurture
The glorious Son of Man.
Though faced with false impressions,
And the enormity of the task,
She joyfully gave God her all
To do as He had asked.
So may I learn from Mary
To listen to God’s voice
Accept His call of service
And make it my glad choice.

But there’s one great example
Who I would imitate
Though I could never run like Him,
All love, all kind, all great.
As child, teen and young adult
In still obscurity
Jesus lived a sinless life
With all humility.
Then all His ministry was good
But He died in my place
So that my sins could be forgiven
By His amazing grace.
And now He runs beside me
And I find that yoked to Him
Any hardness of my race
Grows very very dim.

And so unnumbered witnesses
Surround me like a cloud,
Encouraging and challenging
They cheer loud from the crowd,
Reminding me how they once ran
And stood up for the truth,
Remembering their Creator
In the past days of their youth.

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