This past Wednesday morning, a man named Tedd Mathis announced that his father had died a champion.

"Forty-eight hours before he died," Tedd wrote, "dad was wheeled to the nursing home chapel to preach his final sermon. Christ was worthy, even with a cracked hip, failing kidneys, and a 95-year-old body bruised and stitched together from numerous falls of late."

There's something unusual and inspiring about a life lived faithfully to the very end. It's what we want for ourselves but see so rarely. Of course, really the only way to end well is to live well… What can be called "a long obedience."

At funerals, we hear how someone "is in a better place." They are, but it's also true that God has called us here to make this a better place. So, like this godly man, let's live our lives in such a way that our end is the capstone of a life lived in restoring all things to God's will.