“And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.”

                   -Matthew 5:41

We live in a society of incredibly low expectations. Even in my own life, I’ve noticed that many people immediately classify me as a good person simply because I don’t smoke, cuss, or participate in some of the other sinful things people my age typically indulge in. In other words, all in takes to impress this world is to stay in school, don’t do drugs and, in essence, “behave yourself.” You don’t really have to do anything good; just stay away from anything bad. The problem with this, however, is that we often feel like we’re something special simply because we’re “above average.” Staying away from the bad might be enough to impress the people around us, but God has much higher expectations for us to fulfill.

“Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,”

                                                            -Hebrews 12:1

God is no more impressed with neutral Christians than we would be of our favorite Olympic athlete if he simply sat down on the tracks while everybody else ran the wrong way. Perhaps we’re not headed in the wrong direction, but are we headed in the right direction? Standing still might be all it takes to impress our peers, but it certainly won’t impress God or get us to the finish line. Though we might be considered exceptional in a mediocre society, could it be that we’re just exceptionally mediocre?

All the great men and women of history who are worth remembering were people who used their life to accomplish something good. Abraham Lincoln was known, not for his refusal to own a slave, but for his efforts to abolish slavery altogether. King David was known, not for being a better king than Saul, but as being a man after God’s own heart (Acts 13:22). In the same way, we should live our lives so that people can remember us for what we did do – not for what we didn’t.