I was having a conversation one day with a group of people who were a mix of Christians and non Christians. We were discussing the rather sobering subject of sin and judgement and one man's comment really stood out to me. He was looking into Christianity at the time and as he was listening to what others were saying on the topic he spoke up and said, "I totally get that people like Hitler and other murderers deserve judgement, I understand that. I agree that rapists, pedophiles and people who do awful things absolutely deserve to be judged but my issue is when I hear that ordinary people like me are going to be judged too. I don't think I deserve judgement because I'm not a bad person.".
I really appreciated the young man's honesty and felt I could relate to his issue because I remembered saying something very similar myself before I gave my life to Jesus. I began to share an analogy with the group that I hoped would help shed some light on the Biblical view of "good and bad people" and what the standard is for going to Heaven when we die. A couple of months later I felt the Lord putting it on my heart to turn this analogy into a poem and soon found myself writing "The Race."