by David Melton
It’s a holiday here, Patriots’ Day — the state holiday that commemorates the Battles of Lexington and Concord and the inauguration of the American Revolution, the shot heard ‘round the world. For us locals, it is also “Marathon Monday.” Our church is in Wellesley right at mile 15 on the course route. For runners, it is the beginning of the second half of the marathon, just minutes from famous/infamous “Heartbreak Hill” where so many runners’ dreams to “run Boston” have run out of gas.
When bombs went off near the finish line of the marathon, when three young people were lost and hundreds more were injured, the shock waves were more than just repercussions from the IED made by the murderous radicals. Obviously there were fewer killed here than in the horrific explosion in West, TX, and far less than the catastrophic building collapse in Bangladesh. But this bombing in our city has been so much more than math. To understand why, you have to understand our marathon.
I have told people for years that there is nothing like the Boston Marathon. Our family typically spends part of Marathon Monday somewhere on the route watching and cheering the runners. Thousands and thousands run Boston, and the crowds that line the roads for 26.2 miles cheer for every runner, every single runner! Sure there are elite professional runners, and they are impressive if you look fast as they zoom by, but Boston is mostly about everyday people who are tackling one of the chosen challenges of their lives. They run to see if they can discipline themselves to do it. They train (since our church is on the route I see runners out on “the course” almost every day all year long getting ready), they run, they compete mostly with themselves. Some run for charities as fundraisers. There are very, very few celebrities in the marathon. So you cheer for them all. If somebody runs by wearing an identifiable shirt, maybe from their home state or nation, we call out “Go Montana” or “Go Norway.” Lots of runners will give you a quick glance to thank you for the encouragement but they never lose stride. Marathoners are on a mission — to finish. And crowds are on a mission — to encourage. Bombing the marathon makes about as much sense to us as bombing a birthday party.
Last week, I went for a long, slow walk along the finish line on Boylston Street. The investigators are gone, the mess has been cleaned up, and only one storefront seemed to still be boarded up. Boston was back out on the streets. “Boston Strong” as everybody around here keeps saying.
We are Boston strong, in a way. New Englanders are stereotyped as hardy and tough, sometimes even brusque (though I prefer candid). My son, Matt, and I were at the Boston Bruins game two days after the bombings and we were part of that marvelous statement of resolve when the capacity crowd sang the National Anthem as an act of response to terrorists. You can YouTube that if you want to. Bostonians don’t intend to be pushed around. Boston strong.
But when I walked down Boylston Street a couple of days back, past the media satellite trucks that were still there after two weeks, I looked for other signs of strength. I looked at the churches. You can literally almost throw a rock from the finish line to three churches: the Old South Church, Community Church of Boston, and Trinity Church. Google those if you want to and gauge our city’s spiritual strength.
Back on the campus here at Boston Baptist College I gave my sort of state-of-the-college remarks to our students. I talked about how incredibly important they are to the eternal wellbeing of the people of our area. Whether a student works at a store, or a restaurant, or if they land one of those highly-prized jobs as a manny/nanny driving the kids of wealthy families to school and back — wherever we go in greater Boston almost everybody we meet is without the Lord Jesus. If that doesn’t change, the finish line of life will hold no joy, no victory.