Читать книгу At the End of the Day - James W. Moore - Страница 9

Paul said, "I have finished the race." Nobody can understand and appreciate that comment more than a marathon runner. There are several joggers in our church family, and a few of them have become marathon runners. They run over twenty-six miles in those marathon races, along with hundreds of other runners. Of course, every marathon race has a winner, but far more important to the dedicated marathon runner is completing the race.

A friend of ours recently traveled to New England to run for the first time in the famed Boston Marathon. She had no illusions of winning over the hundreds of other runners, but you cannot imagine the joy she felt in finishing the race. She did it. She made it. She ran the entire course. She completed the Boston Marathon, and she could not have been more elated. She finished the race.

The Christian life is like that. It is not a competition to outrun or outdo everybody else. It is a commitment to keep on running even when it's hard, to run all the way to the finish line.

Some years ago, a woman who had been a committed Christian for many years was seriously injured in a car wreck. The next morning, the doctors came into her hospital room and said, "We hate to tell you this, but we are going to have to remove your right eye. It is so badly damaged that we will have to take it out and replace it with an artificial eye." They did not know how the woman would respond to this news. I love what she said: "If you've got to give me a new eye, give me one with a twinkle in it!" Isn't that great? She didn't quit. She didn't give up. She didn't fall into self-pity. She kept running the Christian race even when it was hard.

That's what she did. That is what the apostle Paul did, and that is precisely what we as Christians are called to do. But the question is, at the end of the day, how will you and I be remembered? Will we be remembered as ones who fought the good fight and as ones who finished the race?