We in the first world are now deep in the playoffs to determine the champions for professional basketball and hockey. Soon the Tour de France will begin. Later the Summer Olympic Games will be held. All of these contests will determine super victors who overcame tribulations few of us can imagine.
The individual competitions will be as short as 10 seconds or as long as 23 days. When complete, medals and trophies will be awarded and the trial will be done. Not so with life.
Games are good simulations for life, but they are not life. Games have a start and finish well within a lifespan of most humans. What can be learned from games is the physical, mental, and emotional stamina and prowess to endure and excel. But if those lessons cannot be applied to life outside the games, the lessons are of little value.
Stuff happens. Trouble happens. It continues long after you hoist the trophy or put the finisher medal on your bookshelf. Oswald Chambers reminds us:
God does not keep a man immune from trouble; He says – “I will be with him in trouble.”
Paul wrote in Romans that nothing can separate us from God. He said that it doesn’t matter how bad it gets, how hard it is, how much it sucks, or how unfair it is, we “are more than conquerors in all things.”
Chambers calls followers of Jesus “super victors” not because we are smart or brave or talented but just because NOTHING can separate us from our relationship to God in Jesus Christ. That’s pretty cool.
My words in this post convey few original thoughts. They are better expressed by Oswald Chambers here and by Paul here.
The Paceline 
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