The Weight You Can Set Down

Runners do not compete in coats. They strip down to almost nothing, because anything extra is something the distance will punish them for. The writer of Hebrews uses that picture for the life of faith. Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus.

He knows this is a distance and not a sprint, which is why he names endurance rather than speed. And he knows something clings, because he says so plainly. The sin that clings so closely is not described as a monster you must slay in a single blow. It is described as weight, the kind of thing you set down deliberately and then set down again when you notice you have picked it back up.

What holds a weary man to the race is not gritted teeth. It is where his eyes are. Looking to Jesus, the writer says, the founder and perfecter of our faith. Your endurance is borrowed from watching him, not manufactured from within your own tired chest.

Lord Jesus, I have been running in a heavy coat. Show me what to lay down today, and keep my eyes on you so my legs remember why they are still moving.