The Pope's Invitation To Run

"Running is the greatest metaphor for life, because you get out of it what you put into it." Oprah Winfrey

I will RUN to meet my personal goal to get back in shape and run extra miles. I am a runner and I invite you to run with me - for fun, for health and for faith.

Would you like to join me in and let's continue running? We can start with a walk if you like. We know that there are no short-cuts in this walks, so let us let us try to go slow. Basically we'll take the bay walk area, walking along the shore in the early morning, you will marvel the beauty of the majestic sun shining from the East as it rises from the horizon filling its shining rays the great blue sky. Fill your lungs with the fresh morning air blowing to your face as we passes the beautiful colored flowers swaying in the morning mist as they stood with grace in the green manicured grass where little birds feeding themselves on the seeds that that have fallen from the trees. Have you ever thought that you are lucky enough to see such beautiful creations while others don't even have a minute to live to witness the wonderful colors of nature, while others are in places where rain and vegetation does not exists.

I guess we can now increase our pace and start with our run. The end of the road is not always far away as it seems, just keep on moving and running in the right direction with inner peace and tranquility in our heart. Let’s seduce our mind with the vision of self-worth and be armed with courage to face change. As we run for 20 minutes, you could feel your feet hit the solid ground and the adrenaline rush as you feel the pounding of your heart, we feel more empowered than exhausted. As we run uphill and downhill and now down the curve , we realized that life is not a straight path. Sometimes we bounce between them and sometimes we need to fall apart to become anew in faith with Him.

Each kilometers are separated with new challenges, we should be grateful of these trials, problems and issues which brought us to connect to our Coach and Trainer in Heaven for the renewal of our energy and the new direction we must walk and run. We must always walk by faith to be able to make it through the challenges of life, but be prepared to lose and leave some battles behind. Life has thorns to make us better and not bitter - an extra luggage we do not need to carry on our run.

Let us take a rest now, this is the end of our run for today. Thank you so much for keeping me company, it was an amazing run, an amazing walk; an amazing experience walking with you. I hope together we can do it more often by running with Christ.

Epilogue

Running has been a part of my life, I have completed two 42K and a couple of 21K Marathons in Manila during the late 80s. My favorite first runs were the 10K Adidas Marathon, that was my first marathon which was held in Marikina City; the 20K Milo Marathon and the 42K Manila International Marathon. I did not win any trophy or medal, but I did not fail, rather I succeeded in my goals in completing the race with the rest of the competitors and it was a learning experience. After 2 decades, with 'baby fats' around my belly, I still run once on weekdays and every weekends and holidays. I invite you to run as we acknowledge our Lord as the source of our everything, our strength, speed, endurance and motivation that may we become great runners for Christ and enjoy the great benefits of being physically fit and active.

"Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize (Jesus is the Only prize)." 1 Corinthians 9:24

Photo grabbed from flickr.com
Uploaded by Kelly Angard - kreativekell