A Marathon with an Undetermined Finish Line

You have probably heard someone describe life as “not a sprint, but a marathon.” This is true on many levels, not the least of which being that a 100-meter or 200-meter sprint is over quickly after it’s started, while a marathon is a 26.2-mile endurance contest that takes even the best runners several hours to finish.

 

But the sprint/marathon comparison is an apt one also because starting is relatively easy, whether it’s an athletic competition, a career, a marriage, or any other endeavor in this experience of everyday living. Arriving at the finish line successfully, however, is a much greater challenge.

A marathon, requires perseverance, determination, and willingness to face adversity, even pain. When you participate a marathon, you’re in it, literally, for the long run.

 

There is one area in which the marathon metaphor for life breaks down. Participants in a marathon race know the distance is exactly 26.2 miles. And as competitors near the end of the race, the finish line becomes visible. The end’s in sight. In the “marathon of life,” however, the distance is uncertain. It’s different for us all. And we never know where the finish line is until the moment we get there.

 

How would you like to enter a race that lacked a definitive finish line? At the very least, it would be disconcerting because you could never know when it was over, right? As difficult as it is to admit, that’s exactly what our lives are like. 

 

We wake up each morning and start preparing for the opportunities and challenges of the new day. Over the course of the day, we might make plans for tomorrow, next week, next month or even next year. But rarely do we pause to consider there’s a finish line out there somewhere, unseen but real just the same. I suppose if we dwelt on that too much, we’d be afraid to get out of bed in the first place. 

 

For some folks, their “marathon” continues for many years. We celebrate those who reach the 100-year mark. We even have a name for them: centenarians. On average, people in the Western world live well beyond 70 years, and lots of them pass the 80-year mark and continue going strong. The length of their “marathons” is a very long distance from their moment of birth.

 

At the same time, we know of people – including friends and loved ones – whose lives were cut way too short, at least in our estimation. Infants, children, teenagers, young adults barely out of college, just getting started with their careers, marriages and families. Their “marathon” ended abruptly. The finish line came way too soon. 

 

When I started preparing to write this, I didn’t have any specific individuals in mind. Then came the tragic news about Dwayne Haskins, the record-setting quarterback at Ohio State. He had been working for an opportunity to start at quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers in the NFL, but died when he was struck by a truck in Florida – just a few weeks shy of his 25^th birthday.

 

Being a longtime OSU fan, I took particular note. Besides the loss for his family and every member of “Buckeye Nation,” Haskins’ unexpected passing served as a somber reminder that we never know when we’ll reach the end of our personal “marathon.”

 

Why is this important? Why invest time and energy on unsettling thoughts about the relative brevity of life? Why not do just as the ancient Israelites said, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die!” (Isaiah 22:13), rather than worry about something we can’t control?  

 

I’d suggest it’s because even though we can’t know our quantity of life – the number of years allotted for us – we can work to determine the quality of our lives. 

Some translations of Ephesians 5:16 strongly exhort us about, “redeeming the time, because the days are evil.” This isn’t saying that time itself is evil, but days pass very quickly, and once they’re gone, opportunities they offered may be lost forever. That’s why the preceding verse cautions, “Be very careful, then, how you live – not as unwise but as wise.”

 

Jesus told a story called “the parable of the rich fool” which illustrates this. He said, “The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’ Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my grain and my goods. And I’ll say to myself, ‘You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy, drink and be merry.’”

 

But Jesus concluded this parable with a grim punchline: “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’ This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God” (Luke 12:16-20).

 

He offered a similar perspective during His most famous sermon,” warning, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:19-21).

So, as we continue along life’s marathon, with no guarantee for how long – when the “finish line” will suddenly appear – we have a decision to make. We can “eat and drink, for tomorrow we die” as 1 Corinthians 15:32 also states, or we can strive to do as Jesus taught, to store up treasures for ourselves in heaven – and be rich toward God. Which will you choose?