I have never run a marathon in my life. One year I began my “training” for the Boston Marathon in July. I had new sneakers and a new dream. Well, my training ended in November when it got much too cold for me. So much for that.
Some of you may have run a marathon, and know better than I do that it is hard. Now let me ask you to picture yourself at age 65 running a whole marathon. Close to impossible . Yeah, there are some who can do it, a few genetic outliers or running professionals. But now picture yourself a 65-year-old man finishing the marathon in four hours. OK, let me change that to a 65-year-old man who has had a heart attack 5 years earlier. Now are you starting to say, “OK, that’s pretty tough to imagine”? But, OK, one last thing: how about finishing the Boston Marathon in 4 hours as a 65-year-old man, having had a heart attack five years ago, pushing your 46-year-old quadriplegic son in his wheelchair?
Impossible?
Not so for Team Hoyt. Dick and Rick Hoyt are a father-son team. Dick is an ordinary guy. Rick is also an ordinary guy who was born a paraplegic. See, when he was born, the umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck and he was starved of oxygen. His doctors had given up on him as a baby, had told his parents to put him away. His father said, “It’s been a story of exclusion ever since he was born.”
But you know what? They have been running marathons for 27 years. But not only have they run 66 marathons over that time, they have also completed 6 ironman triathlons. That means that they swam two and a half miles, biked for 112 miles, then, as if that weren’t enough, they ran a whole marathon. They have competed in 224 shorter triathlons, and … well almost 1,000 events. They’ve also climbed mountains together and once traveled almost 4,000 miles across the country.
Impossible.
So why? Why does his father take Rick on all these races? Why does he basically give up his life and do the impossible with his son? Does he crave fame and power? No. Is he a man who wants to prove a point to the doctors? I don’t think so. Is he a great athlete who wants his son to join him in doing what he loves to do? I’m pretty sure that’s not it either. Dick himself tells us why, when he describes the night after they competed in their very first race thirty years ago: “Rick told us he just didn’t feel handicapped when we were competing.”
When he races, Dick knows his son is free from his handicaps. Dick does the impossible with his son, because it sets his son free.
That is the only reason he races.
You and I have handicaps in life. We each have weaknesses, frailties, bad habits, wounds. Life can seem impossible sometimes, like a race we can’t even enter. Plus, there’s death that eventually comes and puts an end to everything we do on our own. How about living an eternal life?
Impossible?
Not so for Team Christ. When you join Christ’s team, He takes you into a race you can never run on your own. “Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink?” (Mt 20:22)
He takes you into a race where you do the impossible with Him.
Why?
Because it sets you free.
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. Wherefore he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, he has sent me to heal the contrite of heart, to preach deliverance to the captives, and sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of reward.” (Lk 4:18-19)