Sunday, October 5, 2008

Who Says it's a Marathon...

3:56 PM by Christi Bowman

I am constantly being told, by numerous people, that the Christian life is a marathon not a sprint. They tell me I need to pace myself so that I don't burn out. I am confused by statements such as these because verses like Matthew 21:22(MSG) really speak to me.

"Absolutely everything, ranging from small to large, as you make it a part of your believing prayer, gets included as you lay hold of God."

I like the idea of "laying hold of God" and nothing about that sounds at all passive, in my opinion.

I love this quote by C.S. Lewis:

"Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important."

God has, within the last year, miraculously set me free and stirred up a great passion to know Him and make Him known. He has not given me a desire to pace myself in even the slightest of ways, so I was confused by this marathon and pacing language, and I wanted to know where people were getting it. I remembered Paul talking about running a race so I looked up I Corinthians 9 to get a look at the exact terminology.

24Everyone runs; one wins. Run to win.

26I don't know about you, but I'm running hard for the finish line. I'm giving it everything I've got.

I run.

Although I have never run a marathon I know a few things about them. One thing I am quite sure about is that people finish marathons at differant times. The runners who run to win finish a marathon in just over two hours while others who pace themselves can be seen crossing the finish line in an average of five. I began talking this over with my husband who was quick to point out that the word marathon was never used at all; Paul only uses the word race. I got excited about this and typed marathon into BibleGateway.com. I clicked on all the English translations to see if a verse comparing Christianity to a marathon would come up and it did not.

My husband, being a Bible major, also possesses a Vine's dictionary of Old and New Testament words in Hebrew and Greek. He looked up the word race and found that Paul used the Greek word stadion. According to Vine's which is keyed to Strong's reference numbers, stadion refers to a stadium which denotes a racecourse. When Paul was talking about a racecourse he was referencing a stadium of about 600 feet or 1/8 of a Roman mile. My husband and I "Googled" 1/8 of a mile and got 200 meters. The 200 meter dash is a popular sprint and the world record for running it is all of 19.30 seconds.

It looks like Paul was talking about a sprint after all.

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