Adjusting our Focus

An Olympic gold medal winner was asked to comment on how long he took running the 7-minute race in which he had just triumphed in London 2012. 'Well, to be honest', he said, 'that race took me 12 years to complete'.  Quite clearly his life has had one specific focus for more than a decade and it was fulfilled in only 7 minutes!  This is the kind of focus that was in the mind of the great Christian leader Paul (aka Saul of Tarsus) when he said 'one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining towards what is ahead, I press on towards the goal to win the prize for which God has called me..'

'One thing I do' is focus.  '40 things I dabble in' - now that's most of us.  The centre of Paul's focus was God's calling on his life. He kept asking himself 'why has God taken hold of me?'  He ran the race of faith and service with this goal constantly in view.  Nothing else mattered as much.  Education, upbringing, tradition, religious duty and trying to please others were all regarded as rubbish in order that he might discover his real purpose and pursue it with all his heart.

Here is Paul again 'I’ve got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward—to Jesus. I’m off and running, and I’m not turning back. So let’s keep focused on that goal, those of us who want everything God has for us.' (The Message)