When I was growing up as the middle of three sisters, we spent a lot of our summers in the Great Outdoors. Getting kids to play outside was less of a battle back then than it is for parents today. We only had a few television channels to watch and no video games or smartphones to keep us inside, glued to screens. We might start the day watching a few games shows, but the options interested us less and less as the day went on and the lineup of soap operas began. So we’d head out to the backyard to play on the swing set or ride our bikes around the neighborhood.

One of our favorite summer pastimes involved a Radio Flyer wagon and a steep driveway. Living amongst the hills of Nashville, our driveway started at street level and plunged at an incline to the bottom before curving around to the area in front of the garage door. Where the driveway leveled off at the bottom, there was a long curb dividing the asphalt from a sloping little vegetable garden. We loved to take turns sitting at the top of the driveway in our red wagon, holding the handle against our chest with our eyes clearly focused on the goal: Ride the wagon down the steep incline at breakneck speed, then use the handle to steer to the right just in time to avoid flying headfirst over the curb and into the squash and cucumber plants in the garden. It’s a miracle that we never broke a bone or suffered anything more than a skinned knee with these Evel Knievel stunts.

Another favorite summer activity was to challenge each other to Hot Foot Races. As the name implies, we would race barefoot across the blazing hot blacktop. The heat of sisterly competition and the actual heat of the asphalt would spur us on to break Olympic speed records (at least, that’s how I remember it).

I’ve never been much of an athlete, so these outdoors sporting events were the closest I get to understanding the author of the book of Hebrews when he says in chapter 12, “And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.”

When reading these verses, it helps to read the chapter that precedes it: Hebrews 11, the Faith Hall of Fame. Here we see a list of Bible heroes and their claims to fame—Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Joseph, to name a few. Then at the end of the list, we read, “These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.”

Then Hebrews 12 begins with: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles.” The great cloud of witnesses are those heroes listed before, the ones who went before us and showed great faith and endurance even though they didn’t live long enough to see Jesus on earth as he made everything perfect and complete.

Unlike those races of my summers long ago, Hebrews 12 isn’t talking about those short sprints across the blacktop or down a driveway. We’re told to take part in a marathon requiring us to “run with perseverance.”  Fortunately for us, we have One who’s gone ahead and demonstrated the route we should take, a pioneer who has placed mile markers along the way and raised the banner for the finish line. We just need to fix our eyes on Him.