Beware the Third Mile
My Running Shoes
“Nadab and Abihu, however, fell dead before the Lord when they made an offering with unauthorized fire before him in the Desert of Sinai.” Numbers 3:4
I love to run. Well, more specifically I like to run after the first mile. The first mile is hard. It takes discipline to get started. The second mile is better, but I still feel like I’m plodding along. During the second mile it takes discipline to maintain pace.
Then the third mile…ah, the third mile. I think of it wistfully with longing in my heart. I guess that’s when my runner’s high kicks in. My stride lengthens, my shoes lighten, feet gently padding the ground in tempo to the music that pulses from my iPod. It’s as if I’m gliding across a sheet of ice without any effort…a sublime experience to be sure. Sometimes I feel like I could close my eyes and just float along.
(By the way, you can follow my progress as I train and see what I’m listening to on my iPod by checking out the sidebar to the left. Near the bottom you’ll find my running stats and a list of songs I’ve listened to recently.)
Anyway, the discipline of the third mile is to not let my pace get away from me. When running distances longer than four miles a good pace for me to run is between twelve and thirteen minutes per mile. Yeh, I know it’s not terribly fast…actually it’s more like jogging. Sometimes it seems like I can maintain that pace indefinitely. I’ve made it over twelve miles at that pace.
But, if I don’t discipline myself during the third mile, then the fourth mile is like dying. And, anything longer than four is like death. During the third mile my heart relishes the feeling of freedom; basking in the glow of endorphins. But, my head sends out dispatches saying, “Whoa there big fella’. You ain’t built for speed.” If I don’t heed the warnings twelve minutes per mile slips to eleven minutes per mile which quickly becomes ten minutes per mile. Once I even made it to 9’51″ per mile. Guess which mile it was. Yep, mile three. Guess how fast mile four was. I don’t know. I had to stop at about four and a half because I thought I was going to vomit.
Nadab and Abihu had seen God do some incredible things. They were some of the privileged few who saw God and lived to tell about it (Ex. 24:9-11). Later, they saw God himself participate in their inaugural sacrifice by sending down fire from heaven to burn the offering (Lev. 9). The complete story of what happens next is in Leviticus 10, but I’m using Numbers 3:4 because its curtness gives it more impact. By discipline they made it through miles one and two (Ex. 24). God privileged them to experience mile three (Lev. 9). But, they didn’t understand that God didn’t ordain them for that glory. They weren’t built for that kind of “speed”. They were intended to be witnesses to glory, not to be glorified. Glorification is God’s place. There was nothing inherently wrong with what Aaron’s boys were doing. Except that they were trying to take God’s place and create their own glory. And everything is wrong with that.
Then like so many of us in leadership do, they ran beyond God’s authority. They believed, like we often do, that just because there is blessing in what God is doing through us that He is sanctioning what we are doing on our own. God’s blessing isn’t necessarily endorsement of what we’re doing. Sometimes God reveals something amazing to us, a vision of what can be…a glimpse of what He can do, what only He is supposed to do. And, then we try to recreate it like we had something to do with the original. It’s as if we actually say to the Creator of the Universe, “OK, Big Guy. We’ll pick up where you’ve left off.”
Whoa! Wait a minute! That’s exactly backwards. We don’t pick up where He leaves off, He picks up where we leave off. We don’t continue where He ends, He continues where we run out. We don’t complete Him, He completes us.
As spiritual leaders our job is to follow God. Beware of the third mile. Are you wondering why mile four feels like death? Reflect on mile three to see if you ran too fast. Praise God for letting us chase His glory, but don’t run past it trying to make it your own. Running past his ordination for us is death. Do only what you can do and allow God the glory of doing what only He can do.
Tags: 5k, abihu, ipod, leviticus, nadab, nike, numbers