As I may have mentioned, I've been away for a short while walking the Coast to Coast path—a route that stretches 192 miles from St. Bees on the west coast to Robin Hood's Bay on the east. We walked it over 11 days, which averages out to a not-too-unreasonable 17.5 miles a day—though obviously some were a little longer and some a little shorter. For a short section we had three days in a row of just over 20 miles. Any one of those days would have made for a beautiful day out, but the cumulative effect of them was quite extraordinary to experience.

On day one, there was a hill towards the end of the day—not even a big one—that I really struggled with, slowing right down. Eleven days later, walking up and down Robin Hood's Bay—which is much steeper—was no problem at all. And last Saturday, two days after finishing, I ran my fastest parkrun of the year at Fountains Abbey, with—I'm told by the app—my best age-related performance since last October. (Which, incidentally, is still really quite slow, and nothing to brag about!)

My point is this: there was an obvious, marked, and measurable effect on my body and physical fitness that came from simply plodding one foot in front of the other for mile after mile, day after day. No fancy training routine, no particular care for diet—just doing the basic thing, over and over and over.

In our reading this week, 2 Timothy 4.6–8, 17–18, St Paul uses a series of analogies drawn from athletics to describe the approaching end of his life of faith: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”

I've been reminded this week—through listening to others reflect on the end of another life of faith—how impactful and transformative a life that glows with the presence of Jesus can be; how powerful in helping so many to discover how loved they are by the God who creates and sustains them. But also how that incredibly transformative power isn't usually released through flashy, one-off “mountaintop” moments (that we so often find ourselves pining for), but through gentle, constant devotion—day by day, just putting one prayer in front of another, and plodding along beside Jesus.

We’ve now turned the corner (finally!) from the Easter season, and Advent and Christmas are still months away. Stretching out in front of us are the weeks of liturgical desert known as Ordinary Time. It's a name they have not because the season is unremarkable, but because of how the Sundays are numbered—or ordered—just one after the next after the next. It’s a season that invites us to put down the distractions of festivals and the flashy disciplines of Lent, and instead focus on the basics—the ordinary, day-by-day patterns that support our faith and identity in God, through whatever ups and downs may come our way.

So I’d encourage you to take a moment and think: what are the ordinary, plodding patterns of your life (or what could they be) that keep you rooted in your faith, and alongside your God? Appreciate them as much as the spectacular things, and recognise that, at the end of the day, when our time comes, it will be those gentle, daily patterns that will have strengthened us to say we have fought the good fight, finished the race, and kept the faith. And it will be those things that mean, when others remember us, they will say of us that we loved the Lord.