A week from Sunday I am headed to the Adirondacks to run my first marathon. To say that I am jazzed is a bit of an understatement. Running a marathon has been a dream of mine for the past fifteen years. So, the obvious question. Why now, after fifteen years are you just now running one? The issue isn’t that I haven’t tried. The reality is that I have tried and failed. I have begun the process of training to run a marathon—it is a process if you haven’t ever run one—at least five times. I have failed every time except this one. The first time I had no idea what I was doing and a lengthy sickness knocked me out. The second time I blew out my knee. The third, I tore a tendon. The fourth, I broke my foot. And now I am on my fifth try. Every time I have trained I have gotten a bit closer. I have learned from my mistakes. I have engaged in new disciplines and practices, and most recently called others alongside me to help. Now that I am just days away from my fifteen year dream, it looks like I am going to make it. Finally! As I look back, I see that this marathon hasn’t been six months in the making. I see that in reality, this race has been fifteen years in the making. It has taken me fifteen years of training to get here. I am not for sure that my fifteen year training program would be the most popular among the running community, but it is what I have needed.
As I have been training, I have realized that growing into the image of Christ is a lot like preparing to run a marathon. It is a process. We don’t become like Christ overnight. We have to enter into a period of training, a process of intentionally opening our lives to God’s transforming grace through the practices of the spiritual disciplines. Here’s the thing about training. Everyone’s path looks a little bit different, and along the way training is by nature marked by progress and failure.
Everyone’s path looks a little bit different because we are all different people. What keeps me from looking like Christ isn’t what keeps you from looking like Christ. Therefore, what you need and what I need aren’t necessarily the same. You might take up one aspect of the image of Christ quite quickly, while it might take me fifteen years. The point isn’t the path but that we are both headed to the same place. As we head toward that same place, the likeness of Christ, we are going to fail. That’s simply a reality we need to accept and move on with our lives. Just because we know what to do doesn’t mean we are able to do it. We will blow out many a spiritual knee and tear asunder several tendons of the faith before we “arrive.” Once we “arrive” we do so only to realize there is much more “arriving” to be done. Each time we fail we will learn a little bit more, more about ourselves and more about the wonderful grace of God that meets us where we are and enables us to get up and move forward once more. Over time—for many of us a great number of years—and with a great deal of perseverance we will find that what used to be difficult is now quite easy. Sins that used to beset us have long fallen away. Every day we feel a bit stronger, can run a bit further, and can just about hear the cheers of those who wait for us at the finish line. One day, when it is all said and done we will cross that line. We will have run the race and in so doing found God’s grace sufficient for the journey.
A fellow traveler,
Blake
Spiritual Formation Pastor