Across The Finish Line

How you finish the race is more important than how you start it.

That theme recurred again and again at Mary’s memorial service yesterday.

Ginny & I, our daughter Eve, and our friends Wes, Randy & Lisa attended the memorial for our friend Barbara’s daughter Mary who died of cancer on the 17^th. I estimate about 200 other people attended also demonstrating the high esteem Barbara is held in. She’s retired as religion editor of the local newspaper and people of virtually every religious persuasion attended her daughter’s funeral.

Mary had been married four times.

Barbara later told me, “It’s not every woman who has three of her ex-husbands care enough to attend her funeral”.

As Ginny and I stood in a long line to sign the guest book I teased Barbara that there was no need for me to sign unless there was going to be a drawing for a door prize.

She laughed looking better and more relaxed than she has in ages as she’s been worn out giving daily hands-on care to her dying daughter for months and months.

Psalm 84 opened the service:

“My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God. Even the sparrow has found a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may have her young-- a place near your altar, O Lord Almighty, my King and my God”.

Speaking in the service, Barbara said of her daughter, “She was a strong willed child and became a strong-willed woman; that fitted her to fight against the disease… Early on, our relationship went through some difficult and dry places but became lush and wonderful”.

Brittany, Mary’s 17-year-old daughter, did not say anything but she stood beside Dan, Mary’s husband, as he read a tribute to his wife. He said, “My beloved wife and I only had a short time together. Let me tell you, you need to make the most of the time you have… We believed in God before her illness, but we went through a battle. Believe and trust in God for now and eternity”.

Mary’s cancer first manifested itself as a brain tumor, and, after surgery for that, metastasized to become an aggressive small cell lung cancer.

“It’s more important how you finish than how you start,” said Pastor Joe Newton who conducted the service.

“Mary did not live a perfect life, but she did have a perfect Savior,” he said.

I thought it a bit strange since it’s not even Halloween yet, but to deliver his talk the pastor stood near a decorated Christmas tree already set up in the sanctuary.

He chose John 14:1-6 as his text:

Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going."

Thomas said to him, "Lord, we don't know where you are going, so how can we know the way?"

Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

The pastor explained that Jesus came with a message and a function. “The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand”—available to us was His message.

His function was to die on the cross to make that happen.

The pastor spoke of hope for the future. “The desire of God’s heart is that we spend eternity with Him,” he said.

We need no outsider to tell us that sin has separated us from God; our own hearts tell us that. We do not live up to our own expectations, much less God’s.

But the love of God is shown towards us in that while we are still sinners, Christ died for us.

But the Lord of Life rose from the tomb and ascended back to where He had originally come from. He does not just give us directions about how to get to Heaven and say “That’s the way you should go”. He is the way, He personally comes to get us by the hand and lead us Home.

The Way. The Truth. The Life—Exclusive. “No man cometh unto the Father except by Me,” Jesus said.

In conducting the service the pastor did not try to preach Mary into a glowing saint. Those of us who knew her for years before and after her conversion know better than that. But he emphasized that it’s not how you begin the race, or even how you stand midway along, but how you finish that counts.

“Like Mary, you may not have lived a perfect life,” he said, “But like her, if you’ll accept Christ, you too have a perfect Savior”.