Article January 6, 2014 Issue

Lessons from competitive running

Mark Kimball

During my years in high school I grew to enjoy running so much that toward the end of my senior year, even though I wasn’t the best runner on our team, I was among the better middle-distance runners in the state in the division in which my school competed.

Underpinning my budding athletic career was a study and prayer routine I had launched at the start of my freshman year. I began considering how the truths I was learning in a Christian Science Sunday School shed new light on my studies and athletics. Using a Bible Concordance, I selected passages from the Bible that related to running and looked potentially helpful, wrote them down on index cards, and carried them with me to each cross-country and track meet I participated in. Before each race, I would separate myself from the other runners to pray—to listen for what God was communicating to me, and to affirm that it was God's presence, strength, and glory in which, with which, and for which I was running.

On many occasions, I asked a Christian Science practitioner to prayerfully support me during my meets, and Mary Baker Eddy’s statement in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, "Right motives give pinions to thought, and strength and freedom to speech and action" (p. 454), was a constant source of inspiration.

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