My family has a beloved story about my grandfather’s reaction to my dad taking up running. It was the early 1980s when running was not as popular as it has become today. My grandparents had come to celebrate my dad’s completion of the Callaway Gardens Marathon. When the race was over, my grandfather, who knew nothing about marathons or those who ran them, asked my dad if he had won the race. My dad told him that he had not, nor had he expected to win. Now a little confused about why my father would give such effort and even pay the entry fee to run a race that he did not expect to win, my grandfather asked if he got anything for running? To this question, my dad held up the t-shirt given to the race participants and said, “I got a t-shirt.” Then, my grandfather turned to my grandmother with a smile and said, “I think we have raised a fool.” My grandfather enjoyed a good joke, and he spoke these words with a grin, but I have to believe that though he intended these words as a lighthearted ribbing, they did reveal his befuddlement as to why anyone would suffer through running 26.2 miles just for a t-shirt.

It seems foolish indeed to those watching. One of the more common remarks, made in jest by those who are not runners, is that runners look so unpleasant while running. They say our faces carry the expression of pain and our general demeanor communicates suffering. The question is then asked, why would anyone want to do something that makes you so miserable?

It is so common among the church culture that I grew up in and now pastor that few, if any, notice it. An overly harsh judgment would declare this behavior as pseudo-humility, even willfully fake humility. A more gracious judgment would recognize a need for a better and deeper understanding of what salvation does to sin and our lives. I am talking about how many Christians speak with hopeless defeat about their struggle with sin and obedience to God’s word. There is even an overly used, often misunderstood, and theologically deficient phrase that embodies this issue – “I am just a sinner saved by grace.”

Sometimes “just a sinner saved by grace” is employed to excuse or rationalize the behavior of an unrepentant sinner. However, more often, it is spoken by one who truly desires to live righteously before the Lord but feels a need to show humility rather than confidence. Sometimes this same sentiment shows up more subtly. A teacher teaching on an issue of sin will preference their comments with “I fail at this all the time.” A preacher proclaiming from a text that calls the saints to a specific response may temper his words with “we all fall short of this.” In all these things, there is a prominent attitude of defeat. There is an assumption that failure, disobedience, and inadequacy are the norm. Such an attitude recognizes that we should feel bad about not perfectly obeying the commands and expectations of scripture but offers no hope that anything, but a perpetual state of disappointment, can be known.

We pass them by every day on the roads that we travel without much thought or recognition. Little green signs, with white numbers marking the distance in miles from a starting point, blend into the scenery beside the road. These mile marker signs are part of a very long history that stretches back to the first constructed roads. There still stands today beside the roads that the Romans constructed stones engraved numbers indicating the distance from Rome. These stones are called milestones. With this long history, the word "milestone" has found a place in our lexicon not only referring to an object that indicates the distance from a specific point but also to a moment in time that has significance or distinction.

This past weekend I traveled to Columbus, GA, to celebrate a milestone with my dad, who is also named Ben Smith. On Friday, September 1, 1978, my dad started running. From the start, he recorded his running miles and eventually would add them to an Excel file to keep track of his total distance. I was a little boy when he started running, so I do not remember a time when he was not a runner. I do remember that over the years, I would hear him mention different goals that he was striving for. In the early 1980’s he was training to qualify and then run the Boston Marathon. Years later, as his total distance of running approached the distance in miles equal to the distance around the Earth at the equator (24,901 miles), he regularly made announcements as to how close he was getting. When he reached this milestone, he was running with some of his longtime running partners. They stopped and used a disposable camera to capture the moment then continued their run.

A few years ago, I decided to start running. Several reasons motivated me to start running but chief among them was I recognized that my health was not moving in a positive direction. It was not that I had a health crisis or had received some troubling diagnosis but rather I recognized that the combination of not eating well and a lifestyle that was mostly sedentary was conspiring to rob me of energy and endurance.

When I began running, I did two things. First, I dramatically changed my diet. I cut out things that were high in sugar and salt and I cut my portion sizes. The second thing was I began to run every morning. Well, more accurately I attempted to run every morning.

The story of Cliff Young has always fascinated me. If you have not heard of Cliff Young then let me tell you a story of how a 61-year-old farmer turned the professional running world upside-down.

In 1983, Australia hosted its ultramarathon, a 573.7-mile foot race from Sydney to Melbourne. This is a race that takes days to run, and professionals from all over the world came to participate. Shortly before the race began, a 61-year-old farmer named Cliff Young, wearing overalls and galoshes over his boots, walked up to the registration table and requested a number to enter the race. The people at the registration table thought it was a joke—that somebody was setting them up—so they laughed. But Cliff Young said, "No, I'd really like to run." So, they gave him a number and pinned it on his old overalls.