Perseverance

I just got back from a run with one of our students Kyle. Those of you who have known me for any period of time may find this a somewhat humourous picture! But Kyle was very gracious, waiting for me at various points as I stopped to regain my breath by the road side and putting up with my lack of running experience, sticking by me even though he could quite easily have outstripped me and run ahead at so many points.

So, if you couldn’t tell by now, I’m not really a big runner! But, it’s something I want to get better at, and I’m realising that I need to do something to keep fit, (even though, as we ran through a park, a man told us we were “nutcases” for running…)

The thing about running that I really struggle with is keeping going. I’m the kind of person that when something is getting difficult (i.e. a big hill on the Springfield Road!) then, I might decide to take it easy, walk it out or stop and take a rest instead of keeping going, running through the tiredness.

The thing about running with someone else is that you can take motivation from their journey. Running with someone else encourages me to keep on going, to not let them down by having to stop (too often at least!) and take a rest. Having someone else running with you, particularly someone who is better, has more experience and stamina really motivates me to keep going. Having Kyle running beside me motivated me to keep going, and to try and get better at this.

So, we were on the home straight, about 600m left to go, and I was definitely losing steam, but I made a conscious decision in my mind that I was going to keep going, that I was going to make it to our house without stopping running.

At this point in time, Kyle turned to me and said he was going to run full pelt till he got home, and that he’d meet me there. So, he headed off, and got a bit ahead of me.

And then I stopped running.

As I walked slowly back to the house, this reminded me of something that I read about in the Bible a few weeks ago. Hebrews 12:1-2 says this:

“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.”

While I had Kyle in my sights, and while I followed behind him, I was determined to finish the run, inspired to finish by his example. But as soon as he went out of my immediate line of sight, I gave up and fell away, giving up the run and instead settling for something less.

Our walk and life as Christians can mirror this. We can be following after Jesus and his example, and be following so closely behind with our eyes fixed on Him. But the second we take our eyes off Him and instead choose to look to other things in our lives for our motivation e.g. money, acclaim or other people, then that’s when we fall behind and lose the drive to persevere.

May we always have our eyes fixed on Jesus in this life, may he be our ‘pace-setter’, showing us the way to live as the perfect example for us and inspiring us to persevere through the pain, difficulty and challenges that life throws up in our path. In our lives may our eyes always be turned towards Him, may He be constantly in our sights, and if we ever fail, and look away, may we have the wisdom and courage to look back up again.

May he also be able to do something about my aching legs…