More than once, I’ve had such close calls with death that I felt the thinness of the wall between this world and the next. Those moments on the edge of my mortality — whether underwater or in a war zone — were at first breathtaking with suddenness and then sobering with what-ifs. But I was too busy living to think much about dying, and soon those close calls were in the rearview mirror.

However, my latest death threat is no near-miss. Nor can I outrun it. Successive cancer diagnoses in 2019, 2020, and 2021 have struck hard. My situation, though, is no different from what all of us will face because cancer is just another way to die. And one kindness from God I’ve seen (and I can count many of his kindnesses to me in this stretch of my journey) is that cancer has given me a clearer focus on the finish line.

I want to make every stride count — every day meaningful. I want to finish strong. As Eric Liddell, the Olympic gold-medal sprinter turned missionary, famously said, “I run the first two hundred meters as hard as I can. Then for the second two hundred meters, with God’s help, I run harder.” That’s how I want to run the race I’m in right now.

Still, as I pen these lines, I know I haven’t yet finished my course, and I strongly feel Spurgeon’s warning:

The trumpet still plays the notes of war. You cannot sit down and put the victory wreath on your head. You do not have a crown. You still must wear the helmet and carry the sword. You must watch, pray, and fight. Expect your last battle to be the most difficult, for the enemy’s fiercest charge is reserved for the end of the day. (Beside Still Waters, 2)

I am learning much through this experience, and God is certainly increasing my faith; but I admit it’s an uneven work because I am often a poor student. Thankfully, I have a patient Teacher. So, as I continue to press ahead in my race, there are three things I can tell you.

1. Number Your Days

The prayer of Moses in Psalm 90 is full of breathtaking awe and wonder over the God who is “from everlasting to everlasting” (verse 2). The Rock of Ages does not age. He was God before time, he is God who enters time, and he will be God when all our clocks and calendars, histories and monuments are no more.

But then, in cosmic contrast, there is another kind of breathtaking awe over just how brief our time is. Moses says our lives are “like grass” (verse 5) — here today and gone tomorrow. Even if we are granted a full life with enough birthday candles to set off the smoke alarm, yet the fire is extinguished with a breath, and we soon “fly away” (verse 10). So caught between brevity and eternity, we ask God to “teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom” (verse 12). Of course, none of us can add up in advance the number of days we will be given. But what we are to remember is that there is a number, and we can’t add a single hour to it (Luke 12:25).

We may imagine finishing well to look like a life full of years, perhaps like Jacob’s. “When Jacob finished commanding his sons, he drew up his feet into the bed and breathed his last and was gathered to his people” (Genesis 49:33). That’s a nice hope but an unlikely scenario, since death rarely operates on our timetable, and we don’t know whether we will be given ninety years or nineteen. Our finish lines often come suddenly, with little or no warning. There may be no home stretch — only Home, as quick as a wink. And so, given the here-today-gone-tomorrow reality of our vapor-like lives, the best way to finish life well is to finish each day well. We need to run with the heart and pace of a marathoner and with a sprinter’s eye for the swift finish.

2. Follow Closely

If life is brief — sometimes shockingly so — then wouldn’t it make sense to be careful and protect it? Certainly you should exercise, eat healthy, and look both ways before crossing the street, but the fact is that you cannot save your life. You can’t keep it. You can only spend it. So, spend it well.

Jesus told us how. “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 16:24–25). So, we must fully embrace, fully identify with, fully follow our Cross-bearer — whatever it will cost us and wherever it will take us. And clearly the path to fully following Christ is not found in a fear-driven, risk-averse, comfort-zone life. Risk will always be a basic and costly requirement of following and finishing well.

“The best way to finish life well is to finish each day well.”

This kind of risk isn’t just for missionaries who pursue Christ’s calling to the other side of the world. It’s also for speaking the gospel — with all its damning bad news and saving good news — personally, face to face with a coworker or neighbor in a society where “truth is looking stranger than the lies,” as Josh Garrels puts it in his song “Watchman.” In fact, being risk-averse is the opposite of cross-bearing. The One who carried the cross, died, and rose again says the way to life is to follow him in the fellowship of his sufferings and the power of his rising (Philippians 3:10) — and the fellowship of his sufferings necessarily involves suffering. Or as Elisabeth Elliot puts it,

To be a follower of the Crucified means, sooner or later, a personal encounter with the cross. And the cross always entails loss. The great symbol of Christianity means sacrifice and no one who calls himself a Christian can evade this stark fact. (These Strange Ashes, 145)

We want to make sense of suffering, but it rarely makes sense. We want the puzzle to come together and look like something meaningful, but too often there are missing pieces. Our dreams and plans never include chemo or car wrecks or the confusion that comes from deep disappointments and unexpected detours. My pastor often says, “God is calling us to follow him, and he rarely uses his turn signals.” So, we must follow closely and trust the lead and the love of the Shepherd with scars on his hands, who has already gone ahead of us into the darkness to crush Death to death.

3. Remember We Have a Great Savior

Our ultimate and only hope is in our great Savior. Finishing our days well — and our lives — is not about our grit or goodness, the length of our résumé, or the strength of our bodies and abilities. Paul’s letter to the Philippians was written from prison in Rome, and perhaps as his beloved Philippians read the letter, they remembered when Paul first came to their city and his preaching landed him in jail there. What happened in that Philippian cell was one of the most dramatic scenes in all of Paul’s missionary journeys:

About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them, and suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken. And immediately all the doors were opened, and everyone’s bonds were unfastened. (Acts 16:25–26)

But as Paul writes this letter, months — perhaps years — have passed behind bars. There are no dramatic conversions, no midnight hymn sings, no earth-shaking, shackle-breaking deliverances. Far from his usual life in motion, Paul is chained and cannot walk out of his door. When darkness fell over that prison cell night after night, what hope could he possibly have that his life still made a difference? Paul tells us he labored on in hope “because Christ Jesus has made me his own.” So, from his four walls, he was still running hard toward Christ — straining, reaching, wanting to know him and make him known more and more, pressing “toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:12, 14).

John Newton understood this, imprisoned behind his own bars of failing health. Though he had preached thousands of sermons and wrote hundreds of hymns, as his sight, hearing, and strength were fading, he summed up his situation in a sentence:

My memory is nearly gone; but I remember two things: that I am a great sinner, and that Christ is a great Saviour. (Wise Counsel, 401)

Newton’s body was failing, but his hope wasn’t. It was still as strong as when he penned this hymn in the early years of his ministry.

Rejoice, believer, in the Lord,
Who makes your cause His own;
The hope that’s built upon His Word
Can ne’er be overthrown.

Though many foes beset your road,
And feeble is your arm,
Your life is hid with Christ in God,
Beyond the reach of harm.

Weak as you are, you shall not faint,
Or fainting, shall not die;
Jesus, the strength of every saint,
Will aid you from on high.

Christ is the one through whom and for whom we finish well. He is the one who gives the endurance we need, the joy we have, the cross we bear, and the hope we embrace until faith becomes sight.