Running a marathon backwards...


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A member of our church ran the Milton Keynes marathon last week. She said that as she was running along, she overtook someone who was running the whole marathon backwards!

Wow, that is seriously impressive. I mean it’s hard enough to run a marathon forwards. I do a little jogging from time to time, and I’ve done the parkrun and a 10k race, but 36 miles, that’s a long long way. But to do it running backwards…. I don’t think we were designed to run backwards, it’s probably a whole different set of muscles, and then of course, you can’t see where you are going.

Apparently running backwards is a thing- it’s known as retro running[1], and for some people it’s the only way they can run a marathon[2].

Well, when I heard about this, I thought, maybe there’s a bit of an analogy. How many of us are doing life running backwards? Rather than facing forwards into the future, we are going through life facing backwards.

Perhaps it’s due to a sadness in the past, or something that we regret. And however much we try to turn around and face the future, we just can’t do it. We feel trapped looking backwards.

Well the Bible might be able to help. The Christian good news is that through Jesus Christ, we can have our past sorted, and we can look forward to the future.

God is able to wipe away the wrongdoing in our past, and at least partially to begin to heal the memories of the past through his great love. He also gives the free gift of eternal life through his Son Jesus Christ, and so we can look forwards with confidence.

There’s a guy in the Bible called Paul. And he was a quite a nasty, self-righteous piece of work, looking down on others, and even being responsible for the murder of Christians. But then he met Jesus Christ and his life was turned around. And later on he was able to say this… “But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus”. So don’t look back.

Thanks for listening. Have a great day.