Rough start? Stick the landing!

 

He was thirty-two years old when he began to reign, and he reigned eight years in Jerusalem.  And he departed with no one's regret.  They buried him in the city of David, but not in the tombs of the kings. --2 Chronicles 21:20

I'm sitting here watching the Olympic games in Paris, France.  It's amazing to see such tremendous athletes competing on the world stage.   The high level of performance makes it that much more heartbreaking when you see someone fail spectacularly.  

We are tempted to say, "That looks like something I'd do."  If a runner trips and falls, if a gymnast slips off the high bar or the balance beam, it makes them look more normal, more like one of us.  It doesn't matter how much they worked and trained and sacrificed to get there.  It only matters how they finished.

When we read the account of the kings of Israel in 2nd Chronicles, we see some good ones like David, Solomon, and Asa who started strong but faltered at the end.  We also see some terrible kings, like Jehoram whose epitaph is found in the verse cited above.  When he died, "he departed with no one's regret."  Reading a legacy like that in the Bible makes Jehoram rather famous in his folly.  It reminds me of the current meme, "Wisdom has always been chasing you, but you have always been faster."

This is one of the things that shows the veracity of the Bible.  Even the heroes of the faith are shown in their weakness.  We do not want to start strong, and then end poorly.  Nor do we want to be like the character in the Dilbert cartoon above, so entrenched in mediocrity that the best he can hope for is to end in the middle of the pack.

Who is your favorite character in the Bible?  It may be Daniel, who never had a bad thing written about him.  For most of us, it is too late to emulate perfection, for we have most likely already fallen a number of times.  We would do better to follow Joseph, who was kind of obnoxious at the start, but once he humbled himself (or was humbled by God), he remained faithful and ended strong.  He stuck the landing.

In the New Testament, we strive to be like Jesus, "the Author and Perfecter of our faith" (Hebrews 12:2,3).  More realistically, however, we can come closer to being like Paul.  He didn't just start out badly; he literally killed people for professing Christ.  After his conversion, however, he devoted himself to God, to the preaching and teaching of Scripture, so that at the end he could present himself a faithful servant of his Savior.

Paul wrote, "Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize?  So run that you may obtain it.  Every athlete exercises self control in all things.  They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable.  So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air.  But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified. (1 Corinthians 9:24-27).

Coaches have a pithy saying: "No pain, no gain."  Paul put it this way: when we suffer for Christ's sake, "we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." (Romans 5:3-5).

We must never give up doing good, getting better, finishing strong.  Hebrews 12:1 says, "Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us."

In other words, even if we have fallen early, slipped up or tripped up, even if we have scored for the other team, we need to not get discouraged.  We need to stick the landing.