The alarm went off. No, not that alarm. That alarm—for the pump.

I’m not sure the last time I slept for six hours straight. Sup­pos­ed­ly that’s a thresh­old that’s healthy and help­ful.

So I’ve been think­ing more about per­se­ver­ance. We aren’t fac­ing extreme per­se­cu­tion. We have our dai­ly needs. So is it fair to be search­ing for Scrip­ture for pas­sages about per­se­ver­ance and talk­ing about cling­ing to our future hope?

I’ve asked a ver­sion of that ques­tion more times than I can count. Usu­al­ly not out loud. It sur­faces at in the morn­ings after a long night attend­ing to pump alarms, or on a Sun­day morn­ing when some­one men­tions how God answered their prayer and I qui­et­ly won­der why mine feel like they evap­o­rate some­where between my lips and the ceil­ing.

Maybe you know that feel­ing too.

The ques­tion under­neath the ques­tion, for both of us, is this: Does our strug­gle count? Is it sig­nif­i­cant enough to bring to God—and to the texts writ­ten for peo­ple in real trou­ble?

I think it does. I’m still learn­ing why.

The Race That Was Marked Out

Hebrews 12:1 opens with an image I’ve had to sit with for a long time before it stopped feel­ing like pres­sure and start­ed feel­ing like com­pa­ny:

“There­fore, since we are sur­round­ed by so great a cloud of wit­ness­es, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so close­ly, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.”

That phrase — “set before us” — caught me. Not the race we chose. But the one that is ours. And some­how, in ways I can’t ful­ly explain, that dis­tinc­tion mat­ters. We are not sim­ply unlucky. We are not for­got­ten. We are run­ning a spe­cif­ic course, with a God who is not sur­prised by any of it — and who has promised to be present in all of it.

I don’t always know what to do with that. Some days it stead­ies me. Some days it just sits there, heavy and unre­solved. But I keep return­ing to it.

He is ask­ing us to run this. Not sprint through it, or fix it, or tran­scend it. Just run it. With endurance. Which is, by def­i­n­i­tion, a long-haul word.

We Are Not Run­ning Alone

Before the com­mand to run comes the reminder of wit­ness­es. That “so great a cloud” is not sta­di­um imagery for its own sake. It means the peo­ple who ran before us—through per­se­cu­tion, yes, but also through uncer­tain­ty, loss, years of unan­swered prayer, and the spe­cif­ic grief of watch­ing some­one they loved suffer—are some­how present to our run­ning now.

Cor­rie ten Boom, who kept faith in a con­cen­tra­tion camp, has run this race. Joni Eareck­son Tada, who has wok­en every morn­ing for decades to a body that would not coop­er­ate, is still run­ning it. Every par­ent who sat in a wait­ing room with shak­ing hands and prayed any­way has added their steps to this path.

We are not pio­neer­ing alone. We are join­ing a pro­ces­sion.

And at the front of that pro­ces­sion is not a fin­ish line, but a per­son. Verse 2 tells us to fix our eyes on Jesus, “who for the joy set before him endured the cross.” He ran the hard­est race. He knows what endurance costs. He is not watch­ing from a com­fort­able distance—He is the one who has gone ahead and now stands, not just inter­ced­ing, but advo­cat­ing.

He is for us. Right now. While we are more tired than we can explain.

What Per­se­ver­ance Actu­al­ly Looks Like

The Greek word in Hebrews 12 is hypomonē, which car­ries the sense of remain­ing under a weight rather than escap­ing it. Almost by nature of the word, per­se­ver­ance sig­nals a monot­o­nous, con­sis­tent, unglo­ri­ous, long-term sit­u­a­tion. Adren­a­line can’t get you through it. Oth­ers prob­a­bly won’t rec­og­nize what is going on and cer­tain­ly won’t praise you for con­tin­u­ing to slog through.

Romans 5:3–5 traces a pro­gres­sion I keep return­ing to:

“…we rejoice in our suf­fer­ings, know­ing that suf­fer­ing pro­duces endurance, and endurance pro­duces char­ac­ter, and char­ac­ter pro­duces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spir­it who has been giv­en to us.”

Paul does­n’t qual­i­fy the kind of suf­fer­ing. He does­n’t say this pro­gres­sion is reserved for per­se­cu­tion or spec­tac­u­lar hard­ship. The pump alarm counts. The con­stant high-alert state counts. The moment we held it togeth­er in the park­ing lot and then ugly cried the whole way home hop­ing that nobody looked close­ly at the stoplights—that counts too.

And the end­point of this pro­gres­sion isn’t relief. It’s hope. Specif­i­cal­ly, hope that does not put us to shame—hope that holds even when it has­n’t yet been vin­di­cat­ed by cir­cum­stances. This isn’t opti­mism. Opti­mism looks at the sit­u­a­tion and finds rea­sons to feel good. Hope looks at the char­ac­ter of God and finds rea­sons to trust, even when the sit­u­a­tion has­n’t changed.

Is It Fair to Cling to Future Hope?

I think so. I think we have to.

Future hope isn’t escapism. For me, it’s more like fuel—the thing that makes the present race runnable when noth­ing about the present has resolved. The writer of Hebrews under­stood this, which is why Jesus endured the cross “for the joy set before him.” The future real­i­ty did­n’t erase present suf­fer­ing. It sus­tained the one who suf­fered through it.

2 Corinthi­ans 4:17 puts it plain­ly, and I’ll be honest—I’ve had to wres­tle with the word “light” in this verse:

“For this light momen­tary afflic­tion is prepar­ing for us an eter­nal weight of glo­ry beyond all com­par­i­son.”

What I’ve land­ed on is that “light” isn’t a com­ment on how hard our days feel. It’s a com­ment on scale—set against eter­ni­ty, even our heav­i­est griefs are being out­weighed by some­thing we can’t yet see. And that word “prepar­ing” is active. Some­thing is being formed in us through this that could not be formed any oth­er way. Not because God is indif­fer­ent to our exhaus­tion, but because He is work­ing in the real mate­ri­als of our lives—including the extra phone calls to orches­trate care and the grief that sits in our chests when we see peers achiev­ing “typ­i­cal” mile­stones on “typ­i­cal” sched­ules.

Cling­ing to future hope isn’t a fail­ure to accept the present. It’s what makes the present bear­able with­out requir­ing it to be beau­ti­ful yet.

[Cling­ing to future hope is] what makes the present bear­able with­out requir­ing it to be beau­ti­ful yet.

The Per­mis­sion We Might Both Need

I’m still learn­ing to give myself this. Maybe you are too.

If we’ve been qui­et­ly won­der­ing whether our strug­gle is sig­nif­i­cant enough to war­rant the lan­guage of perseverance—I believe it is. Sim­i­lar­ly, it is faith­ful to grieve a life that looks dif­fer­ent than we imag­ined.

Lamen­ta­tions 3:22–23 was writ­ten in ruins, not on a good day:

“The stead­fast love of the Lord nev­er ceas­es; his mer­cies nev­er come to an end; they are new every morn­ing; great is your faith­ful­ness.”

Jere­mi­ah did­n’t dis­cov­er this after the ruins were cleared. He declared it from with­in them. Which means the mer­cy that is new every morn­ing is also new at 3:17am, when the alarm goes off again and we haven’t slept and we are run­ning a race we did­n’t choose, in a lane we did­n’t design, toward a fin­ish line we can­not yet see.

We are held by the One who marked out this course. He has not looked away. He is not wait­ing for us to run it bet­ter before He draws near.

He is near now. In this.

So we keep run­ning. Togeth­er.