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Life As A Marathon

Dear New Covenant Family,

Thanks to the encouragement of some friends, I enjoyed running a marathon last weekend. I know … for some of you, just seeing those two words together—enjoyed and running—makes you wonder if I’m certifiably crazy. But for me, the challenge of finishing a long race became an exercise in endurance. And that’s what the Christian life is: as Eugene Peterson memorably described it, following Jesus is “a long obedience in the same direction.” Life is a marathon.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
—Hebrews 12:1-2

For me, the hardest part of the race was neither the start nor the finish. At the start, I was nervous, but energetic. I had to remember to pace myself lest I exhaust all my energy before the race was half-over. And toward the end of the race, in the final few miles, I felt a fresh surge of energy as the finish line drew nearer.

It was the middle of the race that was the hardest—especially around miles 17, 18, 19, and 20. It was then that I was wondering if I could make it to the end. It was then that I had to work the hardest at keeping my mind focused on the goal. I had to pay attention to my form. I had to resist the urge to give up. I had need of endurance.

Running has become for me a meaningful metaphor of my life in Christ. I want to be a Christian who keeps running the race all the way to the finish line. I don’t want to lose my focus on Jesus, or get sidetracked by sin, or quit running because of discouragement. I want to press on. I yearn to finish well—to be found faithful.

Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what is promised.
—Hebrews 10:35-36

Most of us today are neither at the beginning nor at the end of the Christian race. We’re in the middle. I am reminded of the stirring piece from the preaching of the late Vance Havner called “The Middle Mile.” May this excerpt encourage you today as you patiently press-on in the marathon of life:

To most of us, the most important parts of a journey are the start and finish. But the part of a trip that really tests the traveler is neither the beginning nor the end but the middle mile.

Anybody can be enthusiastic at the start. The long road invites you, you are fresh and ready to go. It is easy to sing then.

And it is easy to be exuberant at the finish. You may be footsore and weary but you have arrived, the goal is reached, the crown is won. It is not difficult to be happy then.

But on the dreary middle mile when the glory of the start has died away and you are too far from the goal to be inspired by it—on the tedious middle mile when life settles down to a regular routine and monotony—there is the stretch that tires out the traveler. If you can sing along the middle mile, you've learned one of life's most difficult lessons...

This grace of the middle mile the Bible calls "patient continuance." It is a wonderful art that few have mastered. It proves, as nothing else can, that character. And it gets least attention from the world because there is nothing very dramatic about it. There is something theatric in a big start or a glorious finish. There is nothing for a news reporter along the middle mile. It is a lonesome mile, for the crowd is whooping'er up for the fellow who got through. It's a hard mile, for it's too far to go back and a long way to go on. But if you can keep a song within and a smile without on this dreariest stretch of life, if you can leam to transform it into a paradise of its own, you have mastered the greatest secret of victorious living, the problem of the middle mile. —Vance Havner, “The Middle Mile.”

Running with you, with eyes fixed on Jesus,

Pastor David Sunday