Several years ago, I told you a story about one of my all-time favorite people. Not that I know her, or have even met her. But I admire her. Because one day, at age 42, in beautiful downtown Cleveland, she ran a marathon by accident (all 26 miles, 385 yards of it). Her name was Georgene Johnson. Still is. As you will recall, she lined up with the wrong group at the starting line. Not the 10K group, where she belonged. But the 26 mile group, where she didn’t. It wasn’t until the four mile mark that she realized her mistake. So she just kept going, finishing the race in four hours and four minutes. But it’s what she said later (by way of explanation) that has stayed with me since. Said Georgene: “This isn’t the race I trained for. This isn’t the race I entered. But, for better or worse, this is the race I’m in.”

Which is true more often than you might think. Relatively few of us are exactly where we figured we’d be….doing exactly what we figured we’d be doing. But we are where we are, and (for better or worse) we’re keeping our feet moving.

William A. Ritter, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com