The cheering crowd of witnesses

Therefore, since we also have such a large cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us lay aside every hindrance and the sin that so easily ensnares us. Let us run with endurance the race that lies before us, keeping our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.

The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews has just rattled through a list of the faithful from the Old Testament era, those who pointed the way and passed on into death still holding to their hope in God.  He envisages them, and also I think those faithful Christians who have fallen asleep in the Lord, as the crowd in the stadium, cheering on the believers who are still toiling in the race.  Those runners are not looking at the crowds; they are looking to Jesus, who stands at the finish line and beckons them on, just as he stood at the start line and set them running in the first place.  Nevertheless, the cheering crowds are surely an encouragement to those who are growing weary.

I've been thinking in the last couple of days that sometimes the Christian life feels less like a race on a stadium track and more like a lengthy cross country.  The course is not always as clearly marked as you'd like.  It seems to have been designed to take in as many obstacles as possible.  Sometimes you find yourself running through streams, or dodging through trees, and wondering if you've taken a wrong turn.  Sometimes you can't really imagine that the race will ever be finished - unlike a stadium race, you can't see the finish line clearly and you might not be sure how far through you are.  Has anyone, in fact, ever completed this gruelling course?

And of course the primary encouragement when we feel like this is that the Lord Jesus ran this way.  Even when we struggle to lift our eyes to see him at the finish line, we see marks along the way that remind us of him.  Yes, he also battled through these brambles; we see the signs of his passing this way.  That sharp rock on which you stumbled and cut yourself is already marked with the blood which he shed there.  Christ ran this way, and he reached the finished line.  Lift your eyes to him.

But also - do you hear the crowds?  There are so many.  Some of them have barely had time to change out of their running kit; some have been there in the crowd for millennia.  They cheer us on.  They made it.  They ran the race, they reached the finish.  We are all mud-bespattered, but they are gloriously clean.  Some of them still carry marks from the wounds they picked up in the race, but healed now; mere memories of suffering, emblems now of triumph, in some ways more significant than the crowns they wear.  And they cheer us on.  They made it; we can make it.

Let's keep running.