I walked to church yesterday with tears welling, as happens on the third or fourth Sunday of April each year. Thousands of runners of all ages and degrees of fitness ran toward me and carried on past. A mother and her young son moved toward the edge and walked for a while. A man ran pushing a woman who lay in a reclining wheel-chair, wrapped in blankets, her eyes closed.

I’ve encountered this race for years now, and it brings tears every time. Partly it’s that there’s room for everyone here: though the front-runners compete, the race seems more about community than competition. Mostly, I think, it touches my own deep longing to run the race faithfully to the end.

Sometimes the bells and clapping and people on the sidelines calling out “Doing great!” and “You got this!” remind me of the great cloud of witnesses of Hebrews 11 cheering us on as we run the same race a few steps behind them. But this time I was most touched by the long uphill stretch in the middle of Burrard Bridge where, for some reason, there weren’t any observers shouting or cheering on the sidelines. All was silent, except for the low rumble of hundreds of feet all quietly running with determination in the same direction.

Life sometimes feels like this. No bells or cheering, no lively music on the corner. Just a moment-by-moment choice to stay focused as best we can and keep pressing toward the goal one step at a time. And, maybe, if there’s grace to hear beyond the sound of our own breathing, the sound of other feet also making the same uphill climb.

That uphill stretch of the race reminded me of this week’s five-paragraph mini-essay in the Renovaré newsletter that arrives in my inbox each Friday. Here’s part of it:

The truly good life is a long game. It is a life of continual surrender and returning to Jesus, moment by moment until the moments have made a life worth living. 

All day long we’re being pitched substitutes and shortcuts for this life of continual surrender to the one who loved us into being. Don’t buy them. Don’t hold back little parts of yourself for fear of what God will do with them. God will be good to all of you and will resurrect glorified any part of you that needs to be crucified.

Maybe you’ve been following Jesus for a long time. Maybe you’re tempted to check out or be on cruise control. Maybe you’re tempted to be on full control—to take by force what God hasn’t seen fit to give you yet. Take a breath. Christ is near. Surrender again. Listen to the quiet voice, and if you can’t hear it listen to the silence. Live as if God is real. Live as if God is capable of taking care of you. Live as if you didn’t have to manage your own safety, security, and reputation. Live as if God thinks you are worth dying for. Don’t take matters into your own hands. Don’t make a deal with the devil to get the good you have coming to you before God wants to give it to you. The good life is a long game. Trust the process. Christ is the process.

—Brian Morykon

How do we find the courage to live as if God is capable of taking care of us? As if we didn’t have to manage our own safety, security, and reputation? As if God thinks we’re worth dying for? We fix our eyes not on our own feet (or fears) or even on the crowds running with us (though knowing we’re not running alone does help), but on the One who ran His own human race with trust and love, even when it took Him to the cross.

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us . . . run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus. . .” (Heb 12:1-2)

At the end of the bridge, a musical group sang in a little white pavilion. Of all the lyrics, I caught a single line: “I build my life on you.” This, this is how we run well—building our life on Christ. And that starts—and continues—with fixing our eyes on Him and praying for grace to follow, moment by moment, where He leads.

Moses “persevered because he saw him who is invisible” (Hebrews 11:27). We will too, as we keep looking to Jesus.