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Running Toward Excellence

The chairman and CEO of Home Depot once told this story at a business conference: Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion, or it will be killed. Every morning, the lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle, or it will starve to death. It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle—when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.

Friends and family of Lakeway United Methodist Church–Pottsboro, grace and peace to you and yours in the name of Jesus the Christ. Amen.

All of us have grown up in households shaped by different work ethics. Some of us were raised by two parents; others, by one. Those dynamics often produce different lifestyles. Yet even a two-parent household guarantees nothing when it comes to income or standard of living—and a single-parent home is no less capable of producing strength and character. Children learn to see the world through the examples they observe—their lens shaped by daily experiences of food on the table, reliable transportation, housing, education, needs, and desires. The list is endless.

I can only speak with authority about my own life. I cannot remember my father ever being gone after work. Only later did I discover that he was an eighteen-wheeler truck driver, hauling seafood from Brownsville, Texas, to the tip of Florida—circling the Gulf of Mexico. My earliest memories are of him working for a seafood company on the L-Head, an extension of the bayfront in Corpus Christi. Later, he ran a family-owned business with sixty-hour workweeks where all the children participated. It was a fish market where Dad bought seafood from fishermen, shrimpers, oystermen, and anyone else willing to harvest from Corpus Bay and the Gulf. It was honorable work—work that provided us with an education, transportation, and everything we needed (though not always everything we wanted). The greatest gift our parents gave us was a work ethic—an ethic that carried into our education, our workplace, and every area of our lives. Our lives, as we used to say, were “running on all cylinders.” Many people live with this same ethic. Others, perhaps not as much. Today’s world is even more competitive. Educational standards are higher, I believe. Yet through it all, I have known only the desire to do my best with what God has given me—supported by the encouragement of family, friends, and the church.

As Acts 24:16 reminds us: “Therefore I do my best always to have a clear conscience toward God and all people.” (NRSV)

Friends, I encourage you to encourage others—to excel in every endeavor, to strive for excellence, and above all, to seek a relationship with God. I have found great hope in Proverbs 3:5–6: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths.”

So whether you are a lion or a gazelle by nature—when the sun comes up, keep running. Blessings from Pottsboro, Pastor Frank (alegria@lakewayumc.org)