This past week I
started a 12 week training cycle for the Indianapolis Monumental ½ Marathon.
I stepped out the
door this morning to a beautiful, crisp, late summer pre-dawn morning. The sun
wasn’t quite up
yet, the Centerville school buses had not left their evening and weekend
parking
lot places, there
was little traffic on the road, and the quiet and gentle morning touched my
soul
as my feet
pounded the pavement each step of my run. I run one long run during each week
of
my training; this
morning’s long run was quite short in comparison to what is coming up over the
next few weeks
but it was still a challenging run. I’ve trained for a few half marathons over
the
last 14 years and I know that hardest runs of
this training cycle are yet to come. The discipline
of the training,
the quiet of the morning runs, and the pay off of good health make each of
these
runs a blessing
in the midst of the early morning wake up calls and the huffing and puffing as
I
try and increase my distance and speed for the
race in November.
Why do I do all
of this training? Well, the obvious reasons are to maintain and improve my
health, a reason
to get some exercise, (which is good for stress management and who doesn’t
need help with
stress management these days?) and to satisfy a little bit of that somewhat
compulsive
personality of mine. But, I also love to see that finish line at the end of the
race. No
matter how well or how mediocre or how awful I
might run any particular race, the finish line
tells me that
I’ve persevered in my training, persevered in the race, persevered in this area
of my
life. And that
has all sorts of implications about how I might persevere in life in general
and most
importantly, how I persevere in this life of
faith and hope in Jesus Christ.
The New Testament
book of Hebrews tells us that our spiritual life is a lot like training for a half
marathon running race.
Hebrews 12:1-2 tells us “And let us run with perseverance the
race
marked
out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and
perfecter of faith.” Our life of faith
and hope in
Christ is like a race; a race in which training, discipline, and hope keeps us
in the
race despite the
long distance we run. We realize that it’s not always going to be easy, but
keep our eyes on
the finish line, and in the midst of it all, feel, hear, and see the soft, beautiful
mornings of our
faith run. Most importantly throughout our “runs”, “we fix our eyes on Jesus,
the
pioneer and
perfecter of faith.”
