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Inconceivable. That’s what people said about the possibility of running a mile in less than four minutes. Sports commentators claimed that it simply couldn’t be done. Physiologists believed that the human body and mind would rise up and rebel against the strain of such a race. The four-minute mile came to be seen as a barrier that no human being would ever be able to break. Then, in the spring of 1954, exactly 50 years ago, Roger Bannister stepped onto the track. He was a British medical student and runner for the Amateur Athletic Association, a young man absolutely determined to break the barrier. Bannister knew that many outstanding milers had attempted to achieve the goal, including one who had missed by a mere 1.5 seconds. But Bannister would not allow the four-minute threshold to intimidate him. On a cold and windy spring day, he took his place at the starting line of a track in Oxford, England. There were about 3,000 spectators in the stands. The race was carefully planned, and Bannister was aided by two other runners who acted as pacemakers, Chris Brasher and Chris Chataway. As they began the race, Brasher took the lead and Bannister fell in behind, with Chataway running in third place. When Brasher began to wear out, Bannister called for Chataway to take over. Then, just about 200 yards from the finish, Bannister exploded into first place with a final burst of energy. He sprinted to the finish line and collapsed into the arms of a minister friend, Nicholas Stacey. "It was only then that real pain overtook me," reported Bannister. "I felt like an exploded flashlight with no will to live." A hush came over the crowd as the announcer read Bannister’s time. "Three minutes, 59 seconds …." In an instant, absolute pandemonium broke out as the crowd realized that they had just witnessed the greatest feat in the history of the mile. In three minutes and 59 seconds, Roger Bannister had broken an unbreakable record and ran what came to be known as the "Miracle Mile." We can relate to Bannister and others who thought a four-minute mile was impossible. We have our own impossible four-minute miles. Think about it. What personal goal seems to you to be attractive and enticing … but also elusive and maybe even inconceivable? · Is it getting over bitterness and disappointment? One of my "impossible goals" is to envision life without children in our home. Every one of my life goals has involved our four kids. But now as they leave the nest for college I am facing a new and difficult chapter in my life. The apostle Paul had a particular four-minute mile in mind: the goal of knowing Christ and the power of his resurrection (3:10-11). He was so committed to attaining this goal that he threw himself completely into the race, and said, "Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus" (vv. 13-14). Did he achieve his goal? No doubt about it. And so can we. The good news for us today is that we can run a Miracle Mile. Let’s begin our training by gleaning some tips from Paul the apostle and Roger the runner, and then take their insights with us into our own personal races. If we begin to think like runners, we’ll develop some daily disciplines that can help us to move ever closer to achieving our elusive personal goals. The first tip is to let go of any attitudes that can distract us as we run the race that lies before us. For Roger Bannister, this meant rejecting the idea that running a mile in less than four minutes was inconceivable. For the apostle Paul, this meant tossing out his old religious orientation, because he discovered that it was trash compared to "the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus" (v. 8). For us, destructive attitudes might include the fear that we cannot find a meaningful career, or succeed in a marriage, or build bonds in a small group at church. When we encounter these attitudes, we need to trash them. They are rubbish, and can get in the way of our goal. The second running tip is to train over time and stick to a schedule. Bannister didn’t decide on the spur of the moment to set a world record, but he worked long and hard in a disciplined way to prepare himself for the Miracle Mile. He had been a competitive runner for years, and then, in the weeks prior to the record-setting race, his training intensity increased. Every day, for one half-hour during his medical school lunch break, he ran 10 quarter-mile races at a pace of 59 seconds a piece. He took breaks of only two minutes between each race. Not exactly a lazy lunch hour. This is the same kind of discipline we are challenged to show as we pursue our professional, personal and spiritual goals. By doing good things a little at a time, week in and week out, we reach the point where we can achieve some very significant objectives. This may mean that we will have a specific time each day to spend with God. We will have a program of devotional reading that includes portions of the Bible. It means that we have decided how we will spend our time in the car during the morning commute. It means that we will have a strategy for prayer and a method of remembering those who need our prayers. A third tip is this: Expect bad days. Every runner knows that some training runs feel awful, and as an athlete you have to try to put the bad days behind you. My soon to be 19 year old son, Ryan, is a runner. Last year at the regional cross country race he had a disappointing finish and did not make it to the state meet. But he did not allow this to defeat him. The next day he entered the citizen’s race at Alyeska and finished in first place. I am proud of my son as I am of all our four children. Because of the way he can focus on a goal and keep going in face of disappointment, Ryan is one of my heroes. Will you and I encounter bad days? Will we face injuries? No doubt. Gossip and unfair criticism can cause terrible pain at work, in social circles and in the Christian community. Will we have setbacks? Certainly. It would be wonderful if promotions always came on schedule, relationships were marked by nothing but peace and joy and harmony, and churches never lost members or suffered divisions. But we know that disappointment, pain and conflict are part of the daily race we face. Fortunately, God always gives us what we need, and he will not let us be tested beyond our strength (1 Corinthians 10:13). Which brings us to the last training tip: Don’t run alone. Notice that Roger Bannister did not run his Miracle Mile by himself — he was assisted by pacemakers Chris Brasher and Chris Chataway. They ran with him, inspired him and ultimately enabled him to set his amazing world record. This is the function of the ChristBody. We’re pacemakers for race-makers. We call out, watch out, step out and reach out — for each other. We can’t do this alone. In the end, it is this spiritual Miracle Mile that matters the most. World records in running are remarkable, for sure, but they rarely last very long — and certainly not forever. Roger Bannister’s record was broken about six weeks after he set it. Since then, the time for the mile has consistently dropped, and in 1999 a Moroccan athlete ran one in three minutes, 43 seconds. This message from Paul is about the future, not the past. But many of us still struggle with our past. We listen to voices that call us to turn our heads around and keep focusing on failures and sins. "How could you have done that?" the past keeps asking. Or it may preoccupy you with the sins of others who hurt you. Either way, the voice from the past makes it impossible to move ahead because it doesn’t let you face the future. The other voice calls out to you from heaven. It invites you to keep moving into the future because you are not yet home, the place where you can settle down. You’ll know when you get there, because heaven is the place where you are no longer haunted by the voice from the past. In heaven, finally, there is no regret. In the meantime, as the apostle Paul says, we strain forward to what lies ahead — the heavenly call. That means we have to forgive, forget and turn away from our past failures because that is exactly what God has done. Only when you believe that are you free to move ahead. The most important race we’ll ever run is the one that ends in resurrection life. It is our faith in Christ that will get us across the finish line. Faith, combined with good training and the support of our fellow runners along the way, will propel us over the finish line called resurrection life. It’s a Miraculous Mile, but there’s nothing inconceivable about it. |
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03.28.04 - The Miracle Mile (Philippians 3:4b-14)
