"Walking, Not Running, Through Life"
What if you were asked this question: "do you prefer to walk or to run?" How would you answer it? I have to admit that for the last twenty -five years of my life I have preferred to "run." Now my idea of running is not sprinting, but more like jogging. But I prefer to go faster when I am exercising, whether it be between points, on a track, or on a treadmill.
The "walking vs. running" metaphor easily adapts to being a metaphor for approaching life. Wallking through life would be taking things more slowly and deliberatively, marking the time of our life. The running would be just "living it as it comes" with very little perspective on life. I have to say my initial response to "walking vs. running" through life, is to say I prefer running. I like a faster pace to life, doing lots of things, not just sitting around and taking it all in. But is that what God wants me/us to do with my/our lives?
At first glance Scripture includes positive references to both running and walking. The running metaphor is paritcularly in Hebrews and the Pauline epistles. In Hebrews 12 we read "let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us." Paul writes to Timothy: "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith." In the latter passage from 2 Timothy 4:7 Paul is thinking more in terms of the Roman race which is most often run by the competitors. But throughout Scripture there is the admonition to walk in the way of the Lord. The Old Testament prophets capture it in Micah 6:8, "What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" Paul writes about it in Galatians and Romans as "walking in the Spirit."
What do walking and running have to do with the way in which we lead our spiritual lives? What do they have to do with ethics? I would think the natural assumption would be that when you walk you are more deliberative. You are more reflective about which course to take before you take it. Walking also is a more inclusive term for the way in which you live your life. Mostly younger and able-bodied persons are able to run through life. Walking can be employed by far more people.
More importantly, walking constitutes not traveling so fast that you miss your life going by. Certainly human beings have been designed to be the rational, reflective species in the world. We have more highly developed brains and can reflect on morality, and not just live life as it comes. We are endowed by God with the capacity of a conscience, which when we do take the time to deliberate, helps us to not only know what is right, but to do it.
In my age-defying moments I would like to say that I can "run" through life and still be reflective, still be speculative, and still be able to discern what is my best next step. But increasingly I have discovered that the pace for really "living and enjoying" life is a slower one. Life is best approached intentionally, "making the most of the time" that we are given by God.
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