Comparison is a punk

​For the first year or so of my running journey, I couldn't run very far without having to stop and walk. To cover any distance at all, there had to be a lot of walking involved. I felt like a constant running failure. Surely my "real runner" friends aren't out there walking.

Then one day, quite out of the blue, someone sent me a book in the mail. It was a book on the Galloway run-walk-run method. While reading it, I discovered I'd been doing some form of this run/walk method my entire running life. To discover thousands of other runners were out there doing the same thing - a thing actual books are written about - was liberating.

From that moment forward, running became more enjoyable and more meaningful to me.

Nothing in my life changed because I started doing anything different. It changed because I stopped letting what others were doing suck the living life out of what I was doing.

I quit getting punked by comparison.

I wonder sometimes if it isn't comparison that more than anything else - with relentless determination - insists that we feel inadequate.

I wonder sometimes if it isn't comparison that keeps us from being all that we can be.

I've had a lot of friends lately who've expressed awe at this virtual race I'm running (run/walking 😜) right now. I don't know how you're doing it, they say. Well, the answer is this Covid crisis. It's given me unexpected flexibility to run more. Being able to do it is as much about timing in life as anything else.

You want to know what amazes me? The moms with 3 young kids at home in this same crisis. The moms trying to work from home and teach from home and hold the home together in a home that's more unpredictable than ever. The moms leaning on every ounce of faith every minute of the day just to keep life moving.

That's my "I don't know how you're doing it."

We are NOT great measures of each other's worth. We are even worse measures of each other's faith. I don't know why it is, but when we try to measure either of those things by comparing ourselves to someone else, we always choose to compare ourselves to someone who is going to make us feel less than.

There is a story in Luke that I love:_______Jesus looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the offering box, and he saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. And he said, “Truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.”_______

That story has a lot of applications, but when I read it, I see a Jesus who knows when we are giving it all we have. Jesus looks straight into out hearts and knows how much of our heart is committed to serving him - and how much of our heart is pointed elsewhere.

At the end of this day, when I crawl into bed and the room is dark and I consider my day, if any of that consideration is based on what someone else did today, well that's a wasted reflection.

At the end of this day, when I crawl into bed and the room is dark and Jesus looks down on my day, he'll be asking how much did you give me today? He'll be looking down as I drift off and he'll gauge the direction of my heart.

Jesus is interested in direction. Our direction. He doesn't care what direction our neighbor is going when he looks at us. He doesn't care if we run the whole way or use the Galloway method as we run toward him. He's only interested in knowing how much of all we have is directed toward him.

Jesus knows every leap of faith looks different. He just wants them pointed in the same direction.