Mornings at about 6 a.m., I’d seem him on the track of the local YMCA — a small steam engine of a man in a navy sweat suit, sneakers plodding past as I walked a warm-up lap. Back bent, shoulders stooped, gray hair receding, he’d chug steadily past.

Bath is a small city, small enough that many of the same people who grew up here and graduated from Morse High School are still around, teaching kindergarteners how to kick a soccer ball behind the Rec. Department, slapping tickets on cars parked too long in front of Reny’s, scanning groceries at Shaw’s. It is small enough to run into people you recognize, such as early-morning exercisers.

“Morse right?” another walker called out as the runner jogged past. “What’d you play?”

“Wrestling ’58 and ’59,” he called over his shoulder without slowing. “Football ’58 through ’61.”

I imagined this man, decades earlier, as a husky teenager running laps around a football field while his coach called directions from the sidelines. How proud his coach would be, I thought, so many years later, to see this man still running.

Scripture repeatedly likens the Christian life to a running a race — a race in which everyone who runs well is eligible for the prize. To win, we must keep our eyes on Jesus, who the author of Hebrews calls, “the author and perfecter of our faith.” In other words, he’s our coach, and he’s given us clear directions: to live generously, to love liberally, and to serve sacrificially as we follow him.

Two-thousand years later, it’s impossible to check the news without being confronted by the overwhelming desperation of 11 million displaced Syrians fleeing their homes, living in tent cities, crowding in boats and trains and trucks in search of safety. While governments debate who should take them, it’s easy to pretend that we ourselves can do nothing.

Yet for those who are running the race to win — for all those still following the coach — passivity is not an option. If you, like me, are stretching your budget every which way to meet your current needs, pray and ask God what you might give up so that you might give more.

Imagine those were your family members, your friends fleeing for their lives. Study their photos. Recognize yourself in their circumstances, because we are in this human community together. This is an enormous crisis, but we serve an even bigger God. And he has called us to help. This Sunday, Sept. 13, churches across the globe are mobilizing their congregations to help alleviate the greatest humanitarian catastrophe since World War II. To find specific ways your congregation can give, go to www.wewelcomerefugees.co m

Then do something.

“So let us not lose heart in doing what is good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary,” Paul writes in Galatians 6:9-10. “So then, while we have the opportunity, let us do good to all people, and especially to those who are in the household of faith.”

Let’s make our coach proud.

Let’s keep running.

MEADOW RUE MERRILL is a Mid-coast Maine writer who shares about God in her everyday life through “Faith Notes.” For more, go to www.meadowrue.com where you can follow her on Twitter or Facebook.