This morning, I woke just before the Kenyan sunrise to join Gladys and Martin, two students at Africa International University, and a few of my colleagues for a run through and around the campus. Martin is from South Sudan and is working on his doctorate at AIU. He desires to return to South Sudan after his studies are complete. His country faces many new challenges with its recent independence, and Martin believes that the church must play a vital role in stabilizing the country. Gladys is finishing a Master's degree and is training to make the Kenyan Olympic team as a marathoner. 

We started off at a jog, rolling over the gravel and dirt road that extends from the center of the university campus to the main gate. Things were feeling good. I'd not run in a week, I had adjusted to the time, and the morning was cool. At about the one-mile point, I gave myself a quick check-up. I'm not used to running early in the morning. Nor am I used to running at 6200 feet. In the end, it was the elevation, not the hour, that did me in.

After 2 miles, I had to pull up. Two of my compadres slowed with me, but it was Gladys that surprised me. Standing at the top of the hill that bested me, she started clapping and motioning me to come on. Head down, I picked up my feet and caught up to her. She wouldn't let me drop. She ran just off my shoulder for the rest of the run. When I slowed, she simply put her hand out from her side, palm forward, beckoning me to pick up my pace again. She ran me in the rest of the way.

In a very real way, she was giving me a lesson in discipleship. She is a much better runner than I. She knows it, and so do I. Yet when I started to flag on the journey, she adjusted her pace to fit mine and then pulled me along. Also notable is what she didn't do. She didn't regress to where I was. She's an elite level athlete. She didn't pretend that she wasn't better conditioned and more experienced than me. Nor did she let me set the pace for long. She slowed to what I could handle, but kept on increasing the pace, gently coaxing more out of me.

In Christianity, discipleship works the same way. We invite people into the journey that we, too, are on. Whether they are consider themselves "runners" or not doesn't matter. We are runners and so we run. The simple act of invitation to run alongside us is all that is needed to start discipleship. One cannot become a runner until one begins to run. But somewhere, if they stay on the path long enough, their identity changes.

Jesus started discipling with the simple command to come and follow. Let's not make it more difficult than it needs to be. Who's running alongside you?