When someone goes all in on you, you are likely to go all in on someone else

​Yesterday was Global Running Day. Just a few years ago it would have been as unlikely a day for me to celebrate as National Star Wars Day (a movie I've never seen).

But I am a runner now - albeit an injured and wobbly and slow one. Still - I run.

We're all prone - sometimes with little thought - to say something has changed our life. But I can tell you, because I'm slow and I've spent thousands of hours running the last 6 years contemplating life, running has indeed changed my life.

If I'm asked how, I'd say two things. It's completely changed how I see me. And it's completely changed how I see you. That's a key to life, isn't it? Understanding how I see myself and how that shapes the way I see and engage with others.

It's not so much the act of running as much as it's been the running community that's shaped me.

In the picture I've shared here, you see three friends who have finished their races running to find me at the back of the pack - always the best place to start looking for me by the way - to help me finish my race. Not only did they wait around, but they were interested enough in helping me discover who I was becoming that they ran to my side to make sure I knew it.

This has come to define the running community for me. A group of people far more interested in who I was becoming than who I once was. A group uninterested in labeling me a slow runner but one interested in being by my side as I became a better runner.

I always say crossing race finish lines opens my eyes more to what is now possible than to what I just did. The force behind that discovery, though, has always been the people by my side. People reminding me I'm becoming someone I never thought I could be while I abandon the person who always thought finish lines were beyond me.

Here's the thing, though. When you experience that in your life - the power of people coming alongside you - you are more driven to be that person in someone else's life. When people meet you with compassion and inspiration and it changes you, you are suddenly more driven to be compassion and inspiration in someone else's life. When you feel the power of someone going all in on you, you are suddenly more driven to going all in on others.

The bible is filled with running metaphors. They talk about finishing the race and about running with perseverance. But you know what all bible characters had who did the whole finish the race and perseverance thing well - they had people running alongside them. They had people fully committed to love your neighbor. They had people who felt like a finish line just wasn't a finish line if it was an "I did it" finish line instead of a "we did it" finish line.

Jesus was all about a "we did it" finish line. That's why Jesus spent his ministry running to the back of the pack helping people discover they were becoming better runners and not condemning them as forever back of the packers. Jesus spent his entire ministry passing up the opportunity for race medals and podium finishes to run alongside those who were discovering who they were becoming while Jesus reminded them I could care less who you once were.

Jesus spent his entire ministry teaching us that if we want to truly love our neighbors, we have to go meet them where they are in the race. Us finishing the race before them should be a sign - a big blowing flowing in your face red flag sign - that they need our help, not a sign that they are somehow unworthy of it. Jesus spent his entire ministry teaching us love your neighbor happens by someone's side, not from a distance.

On Global Running Day yesterday, I was reminded that who I'm becoming has a lot to do with who the people by my side are telling me I can become. And when I look around the world and see people stuck in their races, it might not be because they don't want to become someone better, it might be because no one has run to find them and tell them they can be.