One of the things that I heard from alumni racers again and again and again and again at my training camp way back in October of 2010 was this phrase:
We want to see our CEILING become your FLOOR!
If you’re not a Racer or have never been through the most excellent experience that is a World Race training camp then that might not make any sense to you. So please, let me explain…
What it means is that we want to not only pass on what we learned to future racers, but believe and declare that the things we learned and the faith God built in us would be transferred to them. So when they start their journey they pick up where we left off and go forward into even greater things. Like a relay race they don’t begin at the start, they just take the baton from where we left off and keep running over ground that no one else has run on before. Our ceiling becomes their floor.
As an alumni, especially an isolated alumni up here in Canada, I felt disconnect from the race. My days declaring that our ceiling would be the floor for the World Racers that came after us seemed pretty much over and done with. I did that while I was on the race but now that I am not near enough to go to training camps or anywhere close to a city where alumni gather I had just let the whole idea go.
I read and commented on blogs once in a while, donated some money but I wasn’t actually connected to the race anymore. Which would have been fine except that God kept speaking to me about staying engaged with what was going on with the race. So when I received an email a couple of months back about a trial program to connect alumni to future racers I decided to give it a try. I wasn’t really sure what to expect or what it would look like. To be honest I feel like I got off to a rough start and I was wondering why I was bothering.
Until today…
Today I logged onto my computer and decided to check out the blogs of the two girls I have been attempting to connect with. The one girl has just posted her first official blog post and will be launching on the race in January 2014, the second is getting ready to launch this September. As I read their blogs I could see their passion, their determination, their willingness to lay everything down leaping off of the computer screen. It reminded me of why I wanted to go on the race way back when I was applying.
There is so much amazing potential and wisdom in each of these amazing women and it suddenly struck me how incredible it was to be included as part of their journey. It reminded me of the many times on the race that I had prayed over countries and ministries as we left them that others would follow after to water, to tend the seeds and to harvest. These beautiful, amazing and passionate women of God are the answer to those prayers.
Somewhere inside of my heart this deep, deep desire to see my ceiling become their floor started to swell up as I began to pray for them and thank God for their willingness to go. It is genuinely an honour to pray for them, to support them and to encourage them.
If you are an alumni racer who is considering connecting with these upcoming racers I highly encourage it!
