Lessons from the Fall: Going the Distance

After days of sore hesitation, I said to MBH, “Let’s go.” He drove 1,918 miles round trip on vacation we sorely needed after a month and a half homebound during my recovery/rehab. That weekend, while the family raked leaves with Grandpa, I rested, but I also practiced walking up and down stairs.

That same fall weekend my youngest sister zapped well under five hours in her first full marathon run. Where cable cars climb halfway to the stars, her 26.5-mile route cut alongside cliffs, skyscrapers, parks, and a sandy coast of God swept beauty. A half marathon runner, Joy pushed through the desert dry burn in her quadriceps to go the full distance.

If I had been there, I would have cheered her on with my family. But in her mind were the cheers from these runners. See them run in your mind:

* The 92-years young woman who ran a Hawaiian marathon in a mere nine hours--Mahalo
* A runner/cancer survivor who pushed her limping beloved in a wheelchair to the finish line
* Running faster than my fast sister, a friend with a baby in her tummy at the eighth month
* The seasoned citizen woman who grinned at my sister as she completed an eight-mile jog

In your mind, who inspires you to break through the pain to go the distance? 

By the breath of eternity in God's History Book, I read a curiously inspired quote recorded by a taxman named Matthew:

Jesus said to them, “The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill Him, and He will be raised on the third day.

To his followers Jesus summed the marathon he soon faced. History recorded the details, how one follower’s kiss betrayed him to men who would slander, curse, and beat him bloody guilty. How the crowds were whipped into an Occupy Wall Street frenzy to echo: “Crucify him! Crucify him!”

In fully human pain the innocent Jesus endured the complete route, along the palace walls, besides wailing mothers, through stone gates, to a hill of execution and a cold tomb.

But three days later History recorded that fully divine Jesus was raised, the wounds of our wrongs, wounds that healed not him, but us. In the will of the Father and “for the joy that was set before him, Jesus endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of God” in heaven.

Heaven is where you and I can connect forever with God, where we can live, move, run, and have our being infused by eternal joy. No quad burns, no limps, no sweat, angst or toil.

Go the distance... be inspired to believe.