The Narnia 3 Blog

We often hear a lot about what the Christian life is analogous too. In Scripture it's compared to a race (Heb 12:1), which has led some to compare the Christian life to a running event, often either a sprint or marathon. We know the Christian life is not a 100 meter dash, quick acceleration and then over in less than 10 seconds. I don't even really think the idea of a marathon works all that well, running uninterrupted on flat ground for about three plus hours to cover the 26 miles and some extra yards.

I think the real Christian life is more comparable to football, of course this time of year I find a lot of things comparable to football, but here's what I mean.

The greatest rusher in the history of the National Football League in terms of total yards was Emmitt Smith. In his career he carried the ball 4409 times and gained 18,335 yards. That's roughly a race of 10.5 miles (or less than half a marathon). Here's the thing though. When you look at his average per carry, every time he carried the ball, he went forward 4.1 yards (about 13 feet). At that point, on average, a number of very large opponents would tackle him with great vigor and throw him to the ground. In his long career this went on over 4,000 times.

Even at my advancing age of 53, I'm pretty confident that if I committed myself to training for a few months I could soon reach a point where I could run 10.5 miles without stopping, but I think if a couple of NFL linemen, linebackers, of even defense backs tackled me once I’d pretty much be done for quite a while. 4,000+ times would be unthinkable.

The key for any football player is that you get up after being tackled and do it again, and again. There are great times of course, when the tacklers miss you and you rush for 10, 20, 30, 50 yards and score a touchdown without being tackled. Those are great days, all is smiles and cheers and congratulations. There are also those times, when the blockers miss their assignment and you are thrown for a loss, not even getting back to the original line of scrimmage.

I think the Christian life is much more like football. The opponent is on the field, "seeking whom he may devour" (1 Pet 5:8) and we are living, not 10 seconds of sprinting, nor even a few hours of running, but rather a lifetime of rushing. There are good days of victory and bad days of loss. But Paul tells us, we can do all things through Him who strengthens us (Phil 4:13), and through His power we carry on, ever knowing that there are tacklers coming for us: and they will get us about every 13 feet. But by His grace and in His power, seeing that He has given us all things pertaining to life and godliness (1 Pet 1:3) we persevere and move forward.