The Weight and the Long Race

Therefore let us also, seeing we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, (Hebrews 12:1, WEB)

The writer of Hebrews says, 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. Two things sit together here. First, the laying aside of the weight. A runner strips off anything that would slow him, and the writer names sin as something that clings, that wraps around the legs and drags with every step. Some of what we carry is not sin itself but weight, the habits and situations and quiet compromises that make the sin's clinging easier, and part of running well is honestly setting those down even when they seem harmless on their own.

Second, and this is the word I need most, endurance. This is described as a race run with endurance, not a sprint won in a single burst of effort. Men in this fight often expect to be free by now, to have crossed some finish line where the pull is simply gone. And when the years pass and the struggle continues, when they are still checking in and still confessing and still fighting the same old thing, they quietly conclude they are failing, that everyone else has arrived and they alone are stuck on the road.

The writer expects a long race. Endurance assumes that the road is long and the point is to keep running rather than to have already arrived. He is not describing a defeat. He is describing the normal shape of the Christian life, which is slow and full of days that feel like they do not count. You are not disqualified for still being on the course. The men whose faith we are told to remember were on it their whole lives.

Lay down what you can lay down today, one weight, whatever is nearest and heaviest. Then keep going, one more day of running toward the God who set the race before you, ran it ahead of you, and waits for you at its end.