No Finish Line

A little over 30 years ago, I was sitting at retirement party at Beacon Chapel, the church I attended while in Bible school, when I had one of those life changing moments.

I was about two years removed from dropping out of Washington State University after having reached what remains the lowest point of my life. I had run away from the church and my faith, and as a result I was suffering from incredible inner turmoil that made it nearly impossible to focus on being a student. As God so often does, he used this lowest of low points to grab my attention and seize my heart. I often joke that I dropped out before I got kicked out, but the truth was that God was showing me something different. I didn’t know, entirely, what that something different was, at the time, I just knew that I didn’t belong at Washington State University. So, I left.

I had run away from the church and my faith because I couldn't stand the smell of stagnancy. I had grown up in a church filled with relatively good people, saying lots of good things, but they never changed and never seemed to mature beyond where they were. Consequently, the church never changed. Everyone was content right where they were, holding the moral high ground and equating politeness to righteousness. There was no risk for the sake of the gospel, no boldness or courage. Instead there was safety and security and nice stories about God making people feel better about themselves. Mostly they seemed like everyone else in the world, only, maybe, a little nicer, speaking a subtly different language that made them sound spiritual. It all had a bad smell to me, not the aroma of life that I read about in scripture, but not quite the stench of death - something in between, like food that doesn’t smell bad, but doesn't smell quite the way it should. So, instead of looking for a better way of living out my faith, I ran from it.

I know… it really doesn’t make sense. But God doesn’t use things that make sense to us. If I hadn’t run, I wouldn’t have come back, I would have simply gotten used to the smell. When I did come back, though, I determined that I would never grow stagnant. I determined that I would never stop changing. I didn’t quite know what that meant, I just knew that it was important. 

I sat out of school for a year, working and helping start a youth group in my old musky church. While doing that, I continued to wrestle with my faith. The tussling was at least different, and better than it was before, at that point. Instead of running from the fight, I was running to it. I searched and fought to find out how to avoid stagnancy. As part of my search, it made sense to me, that once my eight month job ended, perhaps I could find better answers at Bible School. 

I didn’t…

I’m still glad I went to Bible School and it definitely played a huge part in helping me to mature in my faith, but it didn’t really answer that nagging question of how to avoid stagnancy. The answer came at a retirement party at Beacon Chapel. 

As dessert was finished and the party was winding down, it came time for the retiring couple to share what was on their heart. I didn’t really know them well, so I was not really sure what to expect. I know for certain I didn't expect what I heard. The woman started and simply said, “Now that we are retired, we can finally do what we have always wanted to do.” I’m not sure if there really was a long pause after that statement, but that is how I imagine it - a long drawn out pause for dramatic effect. Then she continued, “Now we can go on the mission field.” I was blown away and immediately I knew, that is who I want to be. That may not sound like an answer to my question, but somehow it was the perfect answer for me. They were not stagnant in their faith, and retirement didn’t mean they were finished, it simply meant a new beginning. 

I have a favorite old Nike shirt that I picked up on clearance several years ago. I love what it says, even if nobody else seemed to. On the front of the shirt it says, “There is no finish line.” The retiring couple knew that. They lived it. And having no finish line meant they could never be content. Never being content, meant they would never become stagnant. For the Christian, there is no finish line, but stagnancy sets in when we believe there is. That is how I want to live, with no finish line in sight.

Maybe that is really the answer that I couldn’t articulate at the time - each day, each transition in life, each moment when you are presented with something different, is a new beginning with God. Each is a new chance to learn, a new chance to grow, a new chance to change and, ultimately, a new beginning in a closer relationship with Christ. And with each change, there is never a finish line, only another beginning.

I’d like to say that over the last 30 years, that has been a foundational, guiding principle in my life and because of it, there has never been a hint of stagnancy in my faith. I would like to say that, but it would be a total lie. I will say, however, that stagnancy has not been my norm. Nonetheless, there have been periods in my life where stagnancy has caused me to have an unpleasant aroma. In fact, as I am writing, I feel like I am just beginning to smell a little better than I have for a couple of years.

I am 55 and am in my 30th year of teaching. It is a long time to do the same thing. I have managed to keep things interesting by changing schools four times, switching from science to math to technology and then back to math, and even having my own son and daughter as students, but still the toll of thirty years is starting to make my teaching stink. It is not a bad smell, yet, it just doesn’t smell as good as it used to. Others may not catch it, but I can start to smell the stagnancy, not just in my teaching, but in my life and in my faith. And I can tell that it is a building stench that will not simply be rectified by another change in schools or a change in subject. This one will take a little more… more than simply waiting for retirement. 

Those words at Beacon Chapel have been coming back fresh and they have been playing over and over again in my head. I started thinking a couple years ago that once I retire I would do this or that, but I am starting to wonder if God hasn’t been working on my heart and asking me why I would wait. What is so magical about retirement anyway, unless I am more grounded in this earthly dwelling than I am in my heavenly city? Unless I am looking at retirement as a finish line.

I have no interest in retiring the way so many others do. I have no desire to be done and spending the rest of my time fulfilling my earthly "bucket list." I have witnessed traditional American retirement in people, in Christians, I once respected, and it has a bad smell to it. I want no part of it. It doesn’t have the smell of life to it, it has the smell of wasted life. It has the look of a finish line where none exists. I’ve had enough time of smelling bad during my life that I don’t want it to end that way. I want God to determine my finish line, I don’t want to anticipate it, or ever think I’ve reached it. But I am eager to do something different, something that will freshen up my current odor. If God sees fit to keep me healthy and my mind working well, I figure, I could have another twenty years or more, to make solid contributions wherever God can use me. The way I see it, there is no finish line. God will tell me when I’m finished and he is under no obligation to let me know ahead of time when that might be!

So now is the time to prepare for a new adventure, a new beginning, and I can already sense myself smelling a little better!