Each year the Derby Ball, our big fundraiser, focuses on a race… the Kentucky Derby. The horses qualifying for this race are some of the best in the world. However, for the rest of the year, we focus on another race at Narrow Gate… the Race of Life.
In 1 Corinthians 9:24, it says, “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may seize the prize and make it yours!”
As a child I remember being confused by this verse. How could everyone win the race? As I got older, I came to understand that this was talking about the race of life.
We’re all running our own race.
All of us have certain gifts and talents that we are expected to use to the best of our potential to fulfill the purpose and plan that God has for our life. Mathew 25:14-13 tells us the story of the talents. It’s a parable told by Jesus where a master gives different amounts of money (talents) to his servants based on their abilities and then expects them to use and grow that money while he is away. The key lesson is that we should use the gifts and abilities God gives us to the best of our potential.
Last year at the Derby Ball, as I introduced one of our speakers who was a 17-year-old young man, my mind flashed back to yesteryear. I smiled to myself as I remembered a small four-year-old boy from Garden Square apartments walking into my classroom at Urban Outreach to retrieve his older brother after class.
Tiny glasses smudged with fingerprints framed his small, smiling face. My mind then jumped forward several years to the first time this now teenage boy timidly approached his first horse at the ranch with some prompting.
How could time have passed so quickly? Could this 6’2” young man that I now have to look up to really be speaking at the Derby Ball?
Not only did he speak, he touched the hearts of the audience as he stood straight and tall in his well-fitted suit and recited with his friend the poem that they had written with their peers and KHA Homework Club teacher.
It occurred to me that he is running his race as I listened to him recite words about his upbringing in a world of poverty. Yet there he stood in front of hundreds with confidence overshadowing his nervousness. My heart swelled with pride as he finished the poem and the crowd broke into cheers as well as some tears.
He will soon graduate with a high school diploma, and then move into an apprenticeship in HVAC. He is achieving his goal. He is running this leg of his race well.
In many sports we often hear the words, “personal best.” That’s what we pray for the kids who attend Narrow Gate. Our hope with the help of our equine friends is that they will come to understand that God’s grace is sufficient for them to win their race and eternity is our ultimate goal. We strive to help them understand that the prize set before us is not a gold cup or red roses as in the Kentucky Derby, but hearing the words,
“Well done, my good and faithful servant,”
as we cross the finish line of the final leg of our race.
-Susan Zody