Perseverance

"And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith." - Hebrews 12:1-2

As I mentioned in my blog "Rhythm", I've been running daily lately. But when I say running, I really mean alternating between running and walking. Before my new rhythm, I used to run here and there, pretty sporadically, so I kinda reached a running-to-walking ratio that I got stuck at. Probably about 70% running, 30% walking. I had my designated spots to switch from one to the other.

Now, I'm only going 1.5 miles. So to some of my avid running friends, that might seem like an easy run. But I've always been more of a 30-yard-dash kind of person, without the stamina to run long distances. And 1.5 miles is long to me.

So now that I've been running/walking that same route daily for over a week, I decided to try gradually stepping it up. I've added a cool-down walk around my block (increasing the mileage from 1.25 to 1.5), but I'm working towards running straight through the rest of it. No walking breaks. (Peanut will be thrilled. She hates when I stop to walk.)

I've gotten to probably about 90% running, 10% walking (not counting that final cool down). Two walking breaks, each less than a block. But man, I've been struggling to keep running on those long paths in between breaks.

Yesterday as I pushed myself to keep going, the verse above came into my head. Along with Philippians 3:14, "I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."

And I thought about whether or not I put the same effort into pressing on toward Christ and running the race with my eyes fixed on him. (And as luck would have it, thinking about these things totally distracted me from the difficulty of the run.) I prayed that God would give me the same determination to fix my eyes on him and press on toward his goal that I have to run 1.25 miles without any walking breaks.