TARGET PRACTICE

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To the random eye, a soccer game can be described as follows ’22 people chase one ball for a defined period of time’. But when you understand the rules of the game, you realise the target of the game ‘get the ball into your opponents net and prevent them from getting it into yours using any legal means allowed”.

This target guides every action on the pitch. Every turn, kick, throw, sprint, shout is geared towards meeting that target. Without targets or goals therefore, you adopt a scatter gun approach: may be running very fast and with vigour, but heading no where. On such a journey, you cannot get anyone to come along with you.
You might even end up adopting a scatter-gun approach oblivious that  ‘having no set targets leads to much wasted effort’ .

Saint Paul, therefore, writes

“Therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air.” (1 Corinthians 9:26)

There was a destination in mind, a place he wanted to arrive at, a race he wanted to complete. If you have no targets or aims, when will you stop running? And where would you stop? How would you even know when you have arrived?

#sly