My family loves a really good sweet bell pepper so we have a row of peppers planted in our garden. I have been watching a pepper plant because it is by far the smallest of the plants but it has produced the two largest peppers. It looks like a healthy plant; it's just small. Every time I see it, I am reminded of Hebrews 12:1-2 which says, "Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." In my Bible, there is a note with this verse that gives the Greek word and definition for the word translated as 'looking'. The word is aphorao and it says this word signifies undivided attention, looking away from all distractions in order to fix one's gaze on one object. Getting back to my pepper plant, it is as if this plant has one focus and one focus only -- and that is to produce a nice big pepper. It is not worried that it is smaller, actually dwarfed by the other plants. It is doing what it was planted to do.
As for us, we have sixty-six books of the Bible with inspirational examples of people who fixed their eyes on their one goal which was to please God. We should run our race of faith keeping our focus on Christ and remembering what Paul wrote in Philippians 3:13-14, "Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus."
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