Message from the Chaplain

Not Running Alone

Picture yourself at the start of a race.  You’re crouched in position, listening intently for the starting pistol to fire, eyes staring down your running lane to the finish line in the distance...

But what if you’re blind?  How on earth do you make your way round the track?  The answer is: there’s a ‘buddy system’ of guide runners.  You see it in operation at the Paralympics, where athletes with severe visual impairment are paired with sighted runners, who’ll match them step for step, as well as guiding them by warning of possible obstacles and telling them how far to go before the finish.  Both runners - sighted and visually impaired - are connected at the wrist by a small piece of rope, which helps the blind runner stay in his or her lane.

These guides aren’t just linked up with their respective runners on race day, though.  The runner and their guide share a close bond: they train together in preparing for the competition; and if the runner wins a medal, the guide wins one too.  This type of ‘buddy system’ works well in showing that visually impaired people can be elite athletes, often running times that are comparable to those of their sighted counterparts!

If you couldn’t see clearly for running in a race, it’d be especially important for you to know that you don’t run alone – that you have someone with you who already knows you, who can see where to go, and who you can trust to run with you and guide you to the finish. As our Year 12 students come to the end of their schooling and prepare to join life’s “race” outside the familiar environment of Calrossy, I’m sure many of them would value having someone who could go with them and help them navigate the path ahead safely and successfully!  A great encouragement the Bible give us, is that we can have that guide – Someone who has run life’s race already, and who promises to be with us to its end, if we’ll entrust ourselves to His care.  ‘Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus’. (Hebrews 12:1-2).

Rev. Mark Rundle

Calrossy Chaplain