Here Comes a Finisher
Waiting for my brother Ron to cross the finish line at his first Olympic distance triathlon this morning, I was intrigued by the response to the stragglers by those who had come before.
Whenever a lone runner came into view, someone called out, "here comes a Finisher!" Not a straggler; not a loser; but a Finisher. Immediately a dozen or so people broke away from the crowd at the pavilion and cheered and whistled as the competitor ran the last couple hundred yards of his race. It seemed to me that these cheers were more wildly enthusastic than they were for the front-runners, and that this encouragement literally pulled him into the finish line. Afterwards a race official would spend a couple of minutes with the runner, congratulating him on a strong finish. My brother was one of the latecomers this morning, and although the awards ceremony was well under way in the pavilion behind us, his finish was seen and noted as sincerely as the ones before him.
I also noticed throughout the morning that whenever a competitor appeared to be struggling through a transition point, his cheerleaders would call, "you're doing it!" Not "you can do it" as most of us might say, but "you're doing it." They didn't evaluate his performance; they made a statement of fact!
This stuck with me all day. Thinking about Ron's race hours later, I suddenly recalled this verse:
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us (Hebrews 12:1).
I was moved to tears by the image of a great cloud of witnesses pulling me along with their cheers on the days when I have trouble just getting up; when I want to stare dumbstruck at my husband and say, "really?!?"; or when I'm tempted to scrape my two-year old off my leg and run screaming from the house. Instead, by God's grace and the power of his Spirit I persevere. "You're doing it!" they'd exclaim. "Here comes a Finisher!" And Father God himself would see, and congratulate me on a strong finish.
Whenever a lone runner came into view, someone called out, "here comes a Finisher!" Not a straggler; not a loser; but a Finisher. Immediately a dozen or so people broke away from the crowd at the pavilion and cheered and whistled as the competitor ran the last couple hundred yards of his race. It seemed to me that these cheers were more wildly enthusastic than they were for the front-runners, and that this encouragement literally pulled him into the finish line. Afterwards a race official would spend a couple of minutes with the runner, congratulating him on a strong finish. My brother was one of the latecomers this morning, and although the awards ceremony was well under way in the pavilion behind us, his finish was seen and noted as sincerely as the ones before him.
I also noticed throughout the morning that whenever a competitor appeared to be struggling through a transition point, his cheerleaders would call, "you're doing it!" Not "you can do it" as most of us might say, but "you're doing it." They didn't evaluate his performance; they made a statement of fact!
This stuck with me all day. Thinking about Ron's race hours later, I suddenly recalled this verse:
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us (Hebrews 12:1).
I was moved to tears by the image of a great cloud of witnesses pulling me along with their cheers on the days when I have trouble just getting up; when I want to stare dumbstruck at my husband and say, "really?!?"; or when I'm tempted to scrape my two-year old off my leg and run screaming from the house. Instead, by God's grace and the power of his Spirit I persevere. "You're doing it!" they'd exclaim. "Here comes a Finisher!" And Father God himself would see, and congratulate me on a strong finish.