{"id":4404,"date":"2025-02-11T09:35:46","date_gmt":"2025-02-11T14:35:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=4404"},"modified":"2025-02-11T09:36:01","modified_gmt":"2025-02-11T14:36:01","slug":"keep-running","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/11\/keep-running\/","title":{"rendered":"Keep Running"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a>

In 1983, the Westfield chain of shopping malls in Australia decided to stage an ultramarathon between the cities of Sydney and Melbourne.

The race would begin and end, to no one\u2019s surprise, at the Westfield mall in each metropolis.\u00a0

That made the distance a staggering 543.7 miles.

World-class ultramarathon runners \u2013 young, specially trained, equipped with high tech gear, and bearing corporate sponsorships \u2013 flew in from around the globe.\u00a0These competitors planned on completing the event in five to six days.\u00a0They would run about 18 hours and then sleep for six.

On the day of the race, a curious figure approached the registration area.

He was a 61-year-old potato farmer named Cliff Young.\u00a0He wore overalls and gum boots.\u00a0Young picked up his number and joined the other runners.

Was this a publicity stunt?\u00a0Or perhaps a delusional quest that would put an older man\u2019s health at serious risk?

When reporters pressed Young to comment, he said he wasn\u2019t intimidated by the distance. \u201cI grew up on a farm where we couldn\u2019t afford horses or tractors.\u00a0Whenever storms would roll in, I\u2019d have to go out and round up the sheep.\u00a0We had 2,000 sheep on 2,000 acres.\u00a0Sometimes I would have to run those sheep for two or three days.\u00a0It took a long time, but I\u2019d always catch them.\u201d

He concluded, \u201cI believe I can run this race.\u201d

At the starter\u2019s gun, the pros disappeared over the horizon. Cliff didn\u2019t exactly run after them.\u00a0He shuffled.\u00a0<\/em>

At the end of the first 18 hours, as the \u201cserious\u201d runners settled down to rest, Young the Old kept shuffling through the night.\u00a0Sometime before dawn on the second day, he passed all of his competitors and never looked back.

He completed the Westfield run in five days, 15 hours and four minutes, a full 10 hours ahead of second place.\u00a0He simply ignored the impulse to sleep.\u00a0

The tortoise, wearing gum boots, beat a whole pack of hares.\u00a0

Three subsequent winners of the Westfield run between Sydney and Melbourne have employed the \u201cYoung Shuffle,\u201d choosing to run at a steady pace through the event instead of sprinting and stopping.

The biblical way of expressing the same thought is to \u201crun with perseverance.\u201d\u00a0That is not the same thing as subsisting on six-packs of Red Bull or ignoring the impulse to sleep, which is central to sustaining a healthy life.

Perseverance, in this regard, means choosing not to give up on your resolve to be God\u2019s person, even when the emotions that accompanied your original decision have faded away.

The call to pursue a spiritual ultramarathon appears towards the end of the New Testament book of Hebrews:

\u201c[It\u2019s time to] get on with it. Strip down, start running\u2014and never quit! No extra spiritual fat, no parasitic sins. Keep your eyes on Jesus<\/em>, who both began and finished this race we\u2019re in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed\u2014that exhilarating finish in and with God\u2014he could put up with anything along the way: Cross, shame, whatever\u2026 When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he plowed through. That<\/em> will shoot adrenaline into your souls!\u201d (Hebrews 12:1-3, The Message<\/em>).\u00a0

Even when you feel exhausted, compromised, or disillusioned, and wonder if you\u2019ll l make it through another night, by God\u2019s grace don\u2019t give up.

Keep running.<\/em>
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here In 1983, the Westfield chain of shopping malls in Australia decided to stage an ultramarathon between the cities of Sydney and Melbourne. The race would begin and end, to no one\u2019s surprise, at the Westfield mall in each metropolis.\u00a0 That made the distance a staggering 543.7 miles. World-class ultramarathon runners \u2013… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4405,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10,13],"class_list":["post-4404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-perseverance","tag-resilience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4404"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4406,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4404\/revisions\/4406"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}