His legs throbbed as he lay on the hard ground. His vision blurred and the only sounds he could hear were the distant sirens and the beating of his own heart. People surrounded him with interest and deep concern. He felt as if this were the end.

It’s funny how we try so hard, we push ourselves to the very maximum to create hope in the world but with this pushing, we end up bringing self-destruction. As this noble marathoner lay on the hot pavement, he could not help but feel as a failure. Everything he’d hoped and dreamed for, all his ambitions had been lost in this one fund-raising marathon.

He could still feel the sun beating down on him, welcoming him to His presence. Sweat of pain and endurance trickled across his forehead and dampened his hair. Nothing seemed real. The world moved around him but he was trapped in that feeling of failure.

As the medics lifted him onto the gurney, he could feel his thrown-down body throb. The only vivid thing in his mind right then was the picture of his son, his son’s face. He now felt as if he were floating while the ambulance sped along to bring him to the care he needed at the hospital.

The sirens were just above the man’s head, yet they still seemed so distant. The emergency workers in the ambulance applied an oxygen mask to keep him breathing and brought him water. In his head he knew that he would be okay, more or less. Yet somewhere in the dark depths of his soul, he felt that this was the end, he had failed.

Slowly his son’s picture in his mind faded away. His head throbbed with the thoughts that troubled him. His regrets, his mistakes, his terrible sins. He closed his swelling eyes and prayed a prayer for forgiveness, humbling himself to the God he never really got to know. He prayed that in his last moment he could be cleansed from his sins.

The troubled man felt something come over him, something that urged him to keep trying, to keep pushing. That same feeling that got him to run the many marathons in the first place. In his heart he knew that his job was not yet done. He had so much further to go, so many more things to achieve. Whether he was to continue running to raise money for cancer research, for those like his son, or if he was to continue learning about the God that pushed him forward from this dark moment in his life.

No matter where he would go from here, this would not be the end.