Running the Race

It was kind of like a slap in the face. That moment when you’re expecting pain, you know you’ve been hit, but the full extent hasn’t gotten to your brain yet. Then I was transported back to my sophomore year of high school, sitting in Bio class, glued to a TV watching the towers burn in NYC. That memory of the first tower falling mixes with the images from Oklahoma. My mother hadn’t wanted me to see those images, had tried to protect me from them. The images of children, the same age as my brother, covered in blood, limp, obviously dead. Then the pain sets in and I’m back to the present, looking at pictures from Boston.


My family has always been sports intensive. But from the merriment of different sports, soccer, baseball, football, volleyball, and others; we slowly gravitated to running. My sister got into cross country. My brother wanted to run too, so my father started to run to keep him company. Soon my father was running his first ½ marathon, followed by marathons, lots of marathons. We started the tradition of running a 5K every Thanksgiving. My dad started getting the Running Magazine. Running permeated our lives, and it still does. Less than two weeks ago I decided to do my first ½ marathon this fall.

Runners have a certain resilience that bleeds into everything they do. In my experience, most runners have supported some cause or run in the memory of someone dear to them. Running is a very personal, individual, event. However, when you become a runner, you become part of a family. Runners keep track of their own. I’ve had complete strangers, give me encouragement and push me to the finish line. Not only that, but many runners run for reasons outside themselves. Whether it’s raising money for a cause or running in the memory of a loved one or even protesting injustice. Many runners aren’t in it just for themselves.

That’s why the attack in Boston seems so senseless. The finish of a race should be a moment where the pain becomes justified and joy abounds. In Boston that glorious personal victory was turned into a dark ugly scene of blood and destruction. And it would be easy to only see the bloodshed, to only see the worst of the situation. We can ask why and who. We could wallow in the despair of another heartless, senseless attack.

However, that’s only part of the story. The best of human nature always get shown during and after acts of horror. People carrying and comforting complete strangers, Bostonians opening up their homes and restaurant’s giving away free food. There other a huge number or stories of people doing things that can only be call heroic. For all of our ability to be killers and destroyers; we humans can also be selfless and caring. So despite the darkness and the horror and all that blood; I will bend my thoughts and prayers on the good things. And I will give thanks to a God who despite our propensity to great evil, created us with the ability to do greater good.

‘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,’ Hebrews 12:1