VERY SPRING FOR THE PAST FEW YEARS THE CBS TELEVISION network has aired The Amazing Race, in which various teams dart across the globe on a quest to win $1 million.
This year’s series, just concluded as I write, had a strong cliff-hanger: would it be the former NFL cheerleaders, the brother and sister attorneys, or the mother and deaf son who took home the cash award? (It was the sibling lawyers.)
To get the money, contestants not only have to travel all over the place, but also do things mundane (carrying wheels of cheese down a mountain) and, frankly, gross (dine on all sorts of unclean stuff at a Beijing street market). There’s also the ticking clock: “The last team to check in,” says host Phil Keoghan, may be eliminated.
Of course, there’s only a distant comparison between TV’s Amazing Race and the race you and I are called to run as Christians. We have a prize worth far more than $1 million, and our race may take longer than the dozen or so weeks each television series runs.
But there are some similarities: we each have duties assigned to us as a group, and as individuals, to complete as Christians. We’re supposed to meet together weekly for worship, we should care for each other, we must carry the gospel to those in need.
Sometimes, as Paul noted, that means being a “fool” for Christ. Other times, it means doing things that others see as ridiculous but we know are important. How many of our fellow believers have left jobs, family, security to “race” off to a part of the world where our skills were needed?
Above all, this comforts me: when we “check in” with Jesus, if we are trusting in Him, we won’t be eliminated at all!
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Mark A. Kellner is news editor for the Adventist Review.