Timeless Endurance

Endurance is defined as “ability to last, continue, or remain – ability to stand pain, distress, fatigue.” It is a word derived from the Latin indurare, which means “to hold out.”

Some track coaches have made a distinction between stamina and endurance. Stamina, in this contrast, is the capacity to hold near top speed over, say, 400 meters. Endurance, however, is what the marathoner has: capability to maintain a steady pace, despite weariness, over a long distance.

There is nobility in endurance. “You have heard of the perseverance of Job.” James 5:11. He would likely have remained an unknown had he not endured.

Job’s example is poignant because he was a person just like us. No angelic being was this Job. He was a sufferer: he lost his possessions, children and health. His well-meaning friends beleaguered him. Yet he endured to the very end. Yes, there were at times traces of weakness, but at every stage he triumphed and was victorious. Said Job, “Naked I came from my mother’s room and naked shall I return there. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away: blessed it be the name of the Lord.”

There are lessons to be learned from Job: be patient, be penitent, persevere. We are told, the Lord blessed the later days of Job more than his beginning.

Endurance is the power to see life through. It is, as a quality of character, related to integrity. It is associated with being captured by a cause. It is also associated with the inner strength that proceeds from a faith that declares, “I have fainted, unless I had believed.” (Psalm 27:13). Believed what? For starters, that there are some things that are going to endure for eternity: God‘s righteousness, His mercy, His truth, His authority, His word.