First off, here's the background. Two of my friends and I are training for a half marathon. It's in about a month now and every week our distance increases. It is intense but the challenge is so fun! Anyways, you probably have heard how to relate running a race to our spiritual walk.
Hebrews 12:1
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.
Or
Philippians 3:13-14
Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
These are just a few examples.
So in training for a marathon, we have been going off a program that breaks down how we should work out every day up until the race. Being disciplined is tough! That's a lesson in itself. Sometimes I simply don't want to run. But now that we are getting to our long runs it has actually become more "fun." If that's even possible for fun and run to be in the same sentence. The challenge is exciting and every week when the distance goes up I run further than I ever have before. It's a great feeling to accomplish something.
But back to the getting knocked down in the race of life, and having the perseverance to continue to get back up again and again...
Tired physically and emotionally, we are weak and when little stumbling blocks come it's easy to just let ourselves fall. I can attest to this because, I have embarrassingly taken two dramatic falls while running in the past two weeks. The first I stepped on a rock, twisted my ankle, and crashed to the ground while my phone took the brunt of the fall. The second time was on our eight mile run. I was tired and using all my energy to just keep my legs going when the sidewalk became uneven, my toe caught the edge and I went soaring into the air. I realized what was happening but did nothing to stop it. I did manage a little roll at the end to hopefully save my dignity. (Not that I even had any left and turns out I didn't...) I know that my friend probably was concerned at first and then we both could not control our laughter except all the while we were trying to run still.
As we continued our run I had a long while to think. It's amazing how in those moments the embarrassment and pain of literally falling on my face near pretty busy roads didn't really hit me/my pride until later. Both times I immediately got up and told my friend, Megan, to keep on running because I didn't want to ruin our run or mile time. It's amazing that you can be so focused on a goal or challenge that even the most embarrassing situations seem to not matter in the "long run." (That just happened to workout as a perfect play on words.) In the marathon of life when we are knocked down, specifically by sin or a challenging time, we have some choices:
It's easy enough to say duh, the second choice is right , but even at the risk of sounding like a broken record "it's not about what happens in life, it's how you react." So here's the challenge: be so focused on the Lord, your eyes so fixed on him, that even when trouble comes we throw it off, persevere, forget what is behind, and strain toward the real reason we are running at all.
God's Blessings,
Karsyn Penelope
1. We can simply stay down
2. We can be spurred on, use that "adrenaline" to keep on going stronger, and put it in the past and look forward
It's easy enough to say duh, the second choice is right , but even at the risk of sounding like a broken record "it's not about what happens in life, it's how you react." So here's the challenge: be so focused on the Lord, your eyes so fixed on him, that even when trouble comes we throw it off, persevere, forget what is behind, and strain toward the real reason we are running at all.
God's Blessings,
Karsyn Penelope
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