Finish My Course

We have all reached for a sentence like this one to get us through a hard week. It is worth knowing where Paul first said it.

Paul is at Miletus, on the coast, with a ship waiting. He has decided to sail past Ephesus, so he sends for the elders of the Ephesian church, and they come down to meet him. This is a farewell. He tells them what lies ahead: "the Holy Ghost witnesseth in every city, saying that bonds and afflictions abide me." He tells them they will see his face no more.

That is when he says, "neither count I my life dear unto myself." He already knows what it will cost. When he finishes, he kneels and prays with them all, and they weep and walk with him to the ship. Later, at Caesarea, a prophet named Agabus takes Paul's belt and ties his own hands and feet with it, saying the man who owns this belt will be bound at Jerusalem. The whole company, Luke included, begs Paul not to go, and Paul answers that he is ready "not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus."

What Paul wants is described as a race with a set length: "that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry, which I have received of the Lord Jesus." A course is a running track, a measured distance marked out by someone else. And the ministry is something he "received," something handed to him. Years later, in the last letter we have from him, he writes about it in the past tense: "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith."

A course has a length, an owner and an end, and the runner sets none of them. That is the honest shape of a Christian life. The Lord who marked out the course also gave the work, and in Paul's sentence, joy is waiting at the finish.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 280 is Abiding in the Vine (John 15:5).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna, Year Two