Learning About Pace

So, what’s on my mind?

This weekend I did something I had never done before: I ran a half marathon. And it will probably also be the last half marathon I ever run. Before the race I set three goals: 1. Run the whole thing without stopping. 2. Finish the race. 3. Finish in under two hours. Two out of three ain’t bad. I ran the whole time and I finished. The third goal of coming in under two hours slipped away by a few minutes.

As it turns out, pacing is not my spiritual gift. Pacing is the art of knowing how fast you should go early on so that you still have something left later. For the first several miles I felt good. Apparently too good. I was cruising along thinking, “This isn’t so bad. Maybe I’m better at this than I thought!” Then somewhere around mile six, the hills started. And they kept coming through about mile ten. By the time I got through those, I had used up just about everything I had. The final three miles were not so much “running strong” as they were “sputtering toward the finish line while hoping nobody notices.”

My biggest mistake was simple: I didn’t pace myself well in the first half. Now, I realize that connecting running to the Christian life is one of the oldest clichés around. The apostle Paul already beat us to it when he wrote about “running the race set before us.” So I’ll spare you the full inspirational speech about perseverance and finish lines.

But there is something about pacing that has stuck with me. So much of life is lived like the first few miles of my race. When things feel good and the road is smooth, we tend to sprint. We take on too much. We fill every open space in our calendars. We push forward at a speed that feels exciting in the moment but isn’t sustainable in the long run.

Then eventually the hills show up. Sometimes the hills look like stress, illness, grief, or unexpected challenges. Sometimes they’re simply the ordinary demands of life that wear us down over time. And when those hills arrive, we discover that we’ve been running at a pace that leaves us with very little left in the tank.

Scripture actually has quite a bit to say about a different rhythm of life. From the very beginning, God builds rest into the pattern of creation. Jesus regularly steps away from the crowds to pray. The psalms remind us to “be still and know that I am God.” None of that sounds like sprinting. Faithful living isn’t always about going faster or doing more. Sometimes it’s about learning the pace that allows us to keep going.

May God hold you,
Rev Chris Hester