Running Our Race

An email came to me today and it goes…

"…let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking
unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith…"
(Hebrews 12:1-2, NKJ).

We were about to do a glamour photo shoot last weekend and we were waiting for the models to come out from their dressing room. After a few minutes, they came out one by one. We all stopped what we were doing and most of us gawked at them. The models were really pretty and sexy. One was really fair-skinned that one photographer was scratching his head trying to figure out how to adjust his camera’s exposure.

When I recovered from staring and gawking, I remarked “I can never see myself as fair skinned as them.” A friend heard what I said and asked, “Aren’t you suppose to be wishing that you could be as fair-skinned as them. Most girls would? A lot have gone as far as downing bottles of glutathione to shed the melanin off their skin.”

I shot back, “No, am happy with my own skin. It has served me well. I can’t make myself as fair-skinned as the models as I’ll just be worrying constantly about not getting bumped or something.”

In a world today of must-haves, it is just so easy to always be in competition with everyone around us. We feel inferior when we see somebody who has something we perceived as better and superior as what we have. We fret. We fuss. We plan until we outwit, outsmart or outdone them. Sounds like the slogan of the Survivor Reality show but the show probably hit the right nerve about how the world thinks nowadays. But the thing is, being on a constant lookout for somebody who is better than us is a very unhealthy competition because there’ll always be someone ahead of us. There’ll always be someone who’ll be better than us.

The better attitude is to strive to be the best that you can possibly be. Do not compete with others but to yourself. In time and with perseverance, blessings will come.