Life is a Team Sport
1 Thessalonians 5:14 We ask you, brothers and sisters, to warn those who will not work. Encourage those who are afraid. Help those who are weak. Be patient with everyone.
In a world where, these days, we worship celebrities, it’s almost implicit that we should be able to go it alone. That success is about being talented, driven and self-reliant.
Back in my younger days, I spent four years training to become an officer in the Army. Each year, we’d have to pass a battle proficiency test, which involved running nine miles in full battle gear. I absolutely used to dread it. This body of mine isn’t made to run. I’ll walk for days carrying a machine gun and a full pack, but running? It’s just not me.
So my classmates would get around me on the run, they’d encourage me, spur me on, push me, cajole me, whatever it took. And somehow, I’d get through each year. But without them …
We ask you, brothers and sisters, to warn those who will not work. Encourage those who are afraid. Help those who are weak. Be patient with everyone. (1 Thessalonians 5:14)
There are probably some people around you, who aren’t as good at some things, in the way you are. They’re always the ones lagging behind. And honestly, in your heart, the temptation is to look down at them, to despise them, even ridicule them. Eventually we get so sick and tired of them, we want to cut them loose.
But it’s funny, in life, how you can be strong in ways that I’m not, yet at the same time, I can be strong in different things, in things that you’re not so good at.
So just imagine for a moment how different this world would be, if instead of criticising each other for our different weaknesses, we applied our own inherent strengths to encourage and support each other through our different weaknesses.
You don’t have to think about it for too long, to realise that we’d be living in a radically different world if that were the case.
Okay, we can’t make everyone do that. But what we can do, you and I, is to decide that instead of finding fault and picking on other people’s weaknesses, we’re going to encourage them and help them through. Imagine how different your world would be, if that’s what you decided to do.
Encourage those who are afraid. Help those who are weak. Be patient with everyone.
It turns out that life, is a team sport.
That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.
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