Waking up today, I was hovering somewhere between the nether-worlds of sleep and being fully awake. I had a quick dream/thought where I believed that we would be visiting my grandmother today. I was filled with instant excitement at the thought. What I imagined was visiting her as in the good old days before old age and sickness had taken control of her body. I thought of her as when she was still bustling about in her own home. We would arrive and she would take us on a tour of the garden where she would be sure to be proudest of her roses. There would be cookies and rusks and home-cooked meals that could feed an army. I missed her painfully for the rest of the day, for sadly she had already passed away.
I remembered that during her memorial service, the minister spoke from the well-known passage of 2 Timothy 4:6-9. Allow me to quote verse 7:
"I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith."
This passage has been repeating itself to me on and off since then. It has left me with a few questions.
How many of us will be able to say this at the end of our lives? Let me stop at the first statement of having fought the good fight. Do we even read what this truly says? Think about being involved in a fight or battle of sorts. Some of us will be imagining ourselves with boxing gloves, or martial arts gear. Others will picture ourselves as warriors of old dressed in full body armour. Some might see themselves as fighter pilots. And lo and behold, some might even picture something futuristic involving lighted swords and such. How do you see the battle ending? Are you standing victoriously over your opponent? Do you have battle scars or did you walk away unscathed? I bet none of us cast ourselves as the 'bad guy' in the fight. Do you know that this last bit is the only bit that matters? It is not the type of fighting, the era, the dress code, the wounds, or even winning that is important. Paul did not write to Timothy that he had fought well. His legacy was not one of winning. His legacy was one of showing up to fight the good fight. It is the CAUSE that mattered, and that CAUSE was Jesus, and Him risen.
Oh, how we need to shift our focus. We have not been called to out-perform and gather applause from others. We were not created to be generals and statesmen taking all the glory. We are mere soldiers and we have been called to show up to fight the good fight. Paul turned out to have been a 'general', but no one would have been more surprised than him to have learned that.
This brings me to the second statement. "I have finished the race." He did not win it. He showed up, he competed and he stuck to it tenaciously. This required tenacity, the ability to stick it out. Read his list of hardships in the race when he compared it to the races others were required to run: (2 Corinthians 11:23-28):
How many of us will be able to say this at the end of our lives? Let me stop at the first statement of having fought the good fight. Do we even read what this truly says? Think about being involved in a fight or battle of sorts. Some of us will be imagining ourselves with boxing gloves, or martial arts gear. Others will picture ourselves as warriors of old dressed in full body armour. Some might see themselves as fighter pilots. And lo and behold, some might even picture something futuristic involving lighted swords and such. How do you see the battle ending? Are you standing victoriously over your opponent? Do you have battle scars or did you walk away unscathed? I bet none of us cast ourselves as the 'bad guy' in the fight. Do you know that this last bit is the only bit that matters? It is not the type of fighting, the era, the dress code, the wounds, or even winning that is important. Paul did not write to Timothy that he had fought well. His legacy was not one of winning. His legacy was one of showing up to fight the good fight. It is the CAUSE that mattered, and that CAUSE was Jesus, and Him risen.
Oh, how we need to shift our focus. We have not been called to out-perform and gather applause from others. We were not created to be generals and statesmen taking all the glory. We are mere soldiers and we have been called to show up to fight the good fight. Paul turned out to have been a 'general', but no one would have been more surprised than him to have learned that.
This brings me to the second statement. "I have finished the race." He did not win it. He showed up, he competed and he stuck to it tenaciously. This required tenacity, the ability to stick it out. Read his list of hardships in the race when he compared it to the races others were required to run: (2 Corinthians 11:23-28):
"... with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches."This is the race Paul FINISHED. How many of us would be able to? I am certainly not raising my hand right now.
Let me rush to the last part: "I have kept the faith." That there is what it is all about. Don't let the hardships, toils, struggles and pain of this life distract from this one eternally important point. Keep the faith! Finish the race! Fight the good fight!
Marietjie Uys (Miekie) is a published author. You can buy the books here:
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