This phrase is not original with me. I own a book with this title and I’ve heard it referred to many times throughout my life. But perhaps this phrase never means as much as when we are brought face-to-face with the reality that life here does not last forever. All of us, no matter how much we may wish otherwise, will one day have to cross the finish line and complete the race.
This past week, I, for the umpteenth time in my 40-plus years in the ministry, had the privilege of burying a church member, a saint…a friend. She was not terribly old by today’s standards, but she was terribly sick. As I eulogized her, I once again realized what it means to finish well. She finished well…sick, but well.
When we are young, we can’t wait to get started, for that first big opportunity to present itself, to reach an age where people finally take us seriously. I remember being so anxious to turn 30 so people would see me as a full-fledged adult. When we are young it’s all about the starting.
A few years ago I started to notice a disturbing trend. I lost both of my parents in their 70s. I had no grandparents left. My aunts and uncles began to get sick and some of them died. And then, the most traumatic of all was when some of my classmates, including my best friend, began to pass away.
All of a sudden my focus was yanked away from what is, to what will someday, some day much closer than I cared to admit, be the end. The biggest question of life had just shifted from, “How do I get started?” or, “How do I keep going?” to, “How will I finish?”
Lately, I’ve been taking stock of what will be left of me when I am gone. This is how I think we should determine whether or not a person finishes well. What did they leave behind? I’m not talking about money, property, businesses or collections of art. I will leave behind precious little of those things. I’m wondering if the world will be any different because I was here? Will anything I said or did make a lasting impact on a life or two that I touched? This is one of the reasons I’m so passionate about teaching college students.
I know that I will not leave behind a list of my important discoveries, patented inventions or a cure for cancer. I’m wondering though, if when I finish my race here on earth, someone might say that my smile cured their sadness, my words drove away their discouragement or my laugh made them forget they were sick. For you see, I believe that if those are the testimonies of those we walked with here on earth, we may not finish rich or famous or memorialized in marble, but we will have finished well.
-Dr. Rick D. McKinney is the Senior Pastor at First Baptist Church in Momence, Ill., and an adjunct professor for Tabor College in Wichita. Read more from Dr. McKinney’s blog.