Stay in your Lane, Don't Look to the Left or Right

From New Wineskins

What must one do and keep in mind
(and at least as importantly, NOT do and NOT keep in mind)
as the finish line gets close, perhaps within sight?

Let’s pick up on a theme with high Biblical resonance:

Staying in your lane.

One of the radical revelations Jesus made in his earthly ministry, most pointedly in the Sermon on the Mount (aka, the Beatitudes) was that it was not enough to physically stay in your lane (i.e., not murder, steal, commit adultery, etc.) but that God’s standard is that we keep our minds in our lane as well. Merely thinking that you’d like to kill, lie to, steal from, or have have sex outside of marriage with someone is tantamount to actually doing it.

(The impossibility of achieving this for more than a few waking hours on one’s own, much less throughout our allotted threescore and ten helps shed light on the necessity of Christ’s work for us on the cross, enabling us to cling to it resolutely.)

In the photo above we see a clip from the classic 1981 film, Chariots of Fire (a reference to God’s provision for the prophets Elijah and Elisha in 2nd Kings). Harold Abrahams (played by Ben Cross, who more recently played ‘Sarek’, Mr. Spock’s father, a Vulcan elder, in the latest Star Trek movie) looks to his left and loses because of it.

Note how his body follows his eyes, distorting his stride and sapping his forward momentum. The film focuses on the psychological roots that lead him to do this — a combination of works-based theology, egotism and envy. Abrahams, a real historical figure, is a good deal more complex than this, but the point stands: focus ahead; don’t obsess.