Daffodils are popping up everywhere and warm days are appearing bringing spring to Tennessee and to my heart. The first two months of this year were rough ones and the weather seemed to reflect my heart.
Life is not a marathon and yet sometimes it feels like it, doesn’t it? It’s not 26 miles to push through and gain the prize. It’s more like a cross country race filled with hills and valleys. Maybe Paul compared our lives to a race, because He knew that it would require great endurance.
No matter how fleeting our days on earth are, they are composed of different experiences. Some make our hearts soar so that we forget the valley we just walked through and some make them sink, feeling we might never rise again.
How do we NOT grow weary? How do we not lose heart and just give up?
Hebrews 12:1 has the answer: by fixing our eyes on Jesus, setting aside sin and running with endurance.
“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.”