The Runner Who Dropped Her Trophies

In 2019, Olympic gold medalist Kathrine Switzer — the first woman to officially run the Boston Marathon back in 1967 — was asked what she would tell her younger self. Her answer surprised everyone. She said she wished she had spent less time polishing her medals and more time simply running for the joy of it. The trophies, the records, the press clippings — they had become a kind of weight she carried everywhere, defining her by what she had already done rather than freeing her to become who she was still becoming.

Paul knew that weight. He had a résumé that would make any Pharisee envious — circumcised on the eighth day, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, faultless under the law. He could have spent the rest of his life dining out on those credentials. Instead, he used a word that would have shocked his audience: skubala — rubbish, garbage, dung. He threw the whole résumé in the trash.

Why? Because he had glimpsed something so magnificent that everything else looked like yesterday's newspaper. Knowing Christ Jesus as Lord made every gold medal look like tin foil.

And then Paul did something even more remarkable — he refused to rest on his new spiritual achievements, too. "Forgetting what is behind," he wrote, "I press on toward the goal." Not coasting. Not reminiscing. Pressing. Straining. Running with arms open and hands empty, reaching for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. The only way to grab hold of what the Almighty offers next is to let go of what you are still clutching from before.