Several weeks ago the Detroit Free Press Marathon swept across the city on a surprisingly warm Sunday morning. I used to run distance, and have participated in the Free Press races many times. As such, I felt the draw of the race. Even now, mentally reflecting on those races sparks a bodily memory of those Sunday mornings.

I went to cheer at the sideline. By myself. In Southwest, I stood near the 10.5 mile marker, with a group of “official cheerers” across the street from me. For hours, we yelled:

YOU CAN DO IT
JUST KEEP GOING
YES, YOU CAN
YOU’RE STRONGER THAN YOU THINK YOU ARE
ONE STEP AT A TIME
YOU’RE DOING A GREAT JOB

There’s something about the rote repetition of those phrases that choked me up. To offer encouragement when I know the pain that’s inevitably on their path. To know that they have already experienced the ache of exhaustion and yet they continue to press forward.

Endurance athletics are mysterious. At the intersection of impossibility and endurance, they meet you.

On a Sunday morning, I cheered for the runners. I cheered and I cried. In hope for them, and in hope for their perseverance through the struggle. To see the thousands of runners weave their way through the city was like an homage to the people who live here every day.

After very successfully losing my voice, I went to church on the east side with a friend. We gathered, the local residents and visitors alike, and listened to a message of perseverance, endurance, and hope. How serendipitous.

Hope is mysterious. It’s waiting on that intersection of impossibility. Hand-in-hand with suffering, it waits.

And we sang. “if I never knew the struggle, then I wouldn’t know just how I am Loved….”

A few weeks ago Stephen Henderson charged this Challenge cohort to “be apostles of hope”. & honestly, I’ve learned immensely about hope from the people of this City.

You can’t give what you don’t have. So, I’ll sing, listen, and dwell in the moments of silence after the song has ended when the last note still bounces around the church ceiling…where hope shines quietly like the sun-kissed dew.