Judy  Lentz 

PERSONAL BEST

Luke 13:32     I will reach my goal.

Our granddaughter is a budding gymnast.  She works hard every week to get stronger, to perfect the gymnastic moves she has been taught and to do the best she can.  She loves being a gymnast doing cartwheels everywhere she can.  She looks forward to her weekly practice and comes home beaming (no pun intended!).  Following her first competitive meet, her father was talking to her about the scores she had achieved and referred to them as her personal best.

He encouraged her to seek improvement of her personal best rather than compete with the scores of others.  She looked at him quizzically asking “What is a personal best? He explained that rather than setting a high level goal and trying after our first attempt to achieve that high level goal, it would be more productive to see where we are at this moment which we call our personal best and then striving to do better than our personal best level each time until we reach the high level goal.

When Christ was talking to the Pharisees who had come to warn Him that Herod wanted to kill Jesus, He responded,  Go tell that fox, ˜I will drive out demons and heal people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal. And Jesus did just that.  He continued to drive out demons and healing people until on the third day, He arose from the dead to assure eternal life for all of us that was His goal!  So how does this relate to a personal best for us?  As we work to serve our Lord, we need to continually seek improvement of our personal best as we set our eyes on the final goal  to enter the church triumphant where we are blessed with eternal life.   

Prayer:  Dear Lord, we thank you for your unconditional love.  We are so grateful for the sacrifice Christ has made for us giving us the privilege of eternal life.  May we, in return, continually seek improvement of our personal best as we work to serve you until we reach our final goal of eternal life.  In the mighty name of Jesus.  Amen