Hello and welcome to Friday’s daily podcast. I hope these short thoughts and reflections have been a big help to you during this week. If we haven’t met yet, I’m James and it is a privilege to read the Bible together today. It is a short passage today – 3 verses only – however, all of it is gold… we might struggle to keep this to a 6 minute reflection but I will endeavour to do my best!

REFLECTION:

Let me read it aloud for us to hear now as part of the reflection:

For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time for my departure is near. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.  [2 Tim 4:6-8]

There is a force in and through these words about finishing well. I don’t know about you, but I am not great at finishing things. Now, that might seem an odd confession if you were to also realise that my boss listens daily to these podcasts so let me qualify that statement quickly. It is not that I am work shy or distractible. I’ve come to discover that it is part of my personality to tweak things, or review them over and over. I often struggle to put things down and call them finished. I do it with all sorts of things, from cooking a Bolognese to handing in this podcast script. I’m that guy who goes rooting through the cupboards to find one more herb and spice. The only reason it eventually ends up on the plate is because I run out of time or my wife and kids really need to be fed. I could keep tweaking the sentences held in this reflection forever but the good people of STC and my colleagues who help get this to our devices eventually need a copy of something so we can all consider God’s word today. That’s me. Deadlines get the best out of me. I’ve still got a lot to learn about finishing well. What about you? What’s your relationship like to finishing things? You might be the tick-box-task-list oriented type. However, finishing is different to finishing well. Let’s consider this Bible story again and what it can teach us about the Christian life, Christian truth and our hope for the future.

Verse 6. “the time for my departure is near.” Paul is clearly talking about his death. He is aware that he is soon to die. We know from history that Paul was mistreated and arrested by emperor Nero, head of the Roman empire. But there is a tone in Paul’s writing that is not of defeat but of triumph and of hope. Three statements are then made swiftly in verse 7. I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith. Boom. Boom. Boom. This totally mirrors how he ended his letter to his young apprentice in his first letter that we looked at a few weeks ago. Where he appealed that Timothy to keep fighting the good fight of the faith… now he is aware that his own fight is coming to an end with a tone of triumph.

I suppose the emphasis in these examples is not at all on the speed of completion of the task. They are not about winning per se, although they ring of victory. They speak of perseverance, endurance and of pace. Paul makes no claim to have won the race but hat he is content to have stayed the course. I’ve read in a commentary that this sports analogy is a favourite metaphor of Paul’s. We see it all over the New Testament. Here is some Christian truth for us to finish this week of reflections… the Christian life is not a sprint, it is a marathon. If you are a young person, a student or young adult who is listening, we want to be as on fire for Jesus and as faithful to him in our 70s as we had been when we were in our 20s. Amen? Amen!

Let me tell a story of someone who I have seen finish well through the opportunity of this podcast – now what makes STC Sheffield such a special ...