She sent me a text today.  I remember when she used to call me and we’d speak with each other.  But, life got busy and since I was working with customers in the music store, she never knew if it was convenient for me to talk, so the phone calls became problematic.  Now she has a smart phone, one that actually has a “qwerty” keyboard on it.  She learned to type many years ago, so she has taken to the texting just fine.  I have decided that I don’t detest it as I once did, so I grudgingly crossed the threshold of the twenty-first century with her.  Or, so I thought.

Photo: Vasile23

She sent me a text today, and I answered it.  You see, I know how to type, too.  It’s just that I hit the wrong spot on the screen more often than not.  I don’t like auto-correct programs.  They take my errors and make them into embarrassingly wrong (but valid) words.  However, when I entered into the twenty-first century, I also acquired a phone that talks to me, and listens too.  You know the ones.  You ask the little rectangular black box how many miles it is to home and the computer-generated female voice replies, “I’m sorry, Paul.  I don’t know where you live.”   Hopefully, she will learn.  I have found though, that if I click the little microphone icon when I am ready to answer a text message, I can just say the words, along with the names of the punctuation marks to be included (“period”, “comma”, etc.), and the little stenographer in the black box responds quite nicely.

So, She sent me a text today, and I answered it, with a little help.  But, as I punched “send” on my phone (the little lady in the box hasn’t learned to do that for me yet), I realized something that took me by surprise.  I am still talking on the phone, just like I used to. Well…almost.  I don’t text; I send delayed phone messages.  So, why am I not actually talking to the Lovely Lady, instead of pretending to be a part of the culture of hip communicators that surround me?

On a closely related topic, I was first amused, then frustrated this afternoon as I witnessed this “communication” in action again.  The lady came in asking for guitar strings for her son.  She knew the brand of strings and the type of guitar…well, sort of.  Her son had given her the brand name and a descriptive word for the guitar–“standard”.  I pointed her to the exact strings, but the descriptive word on the package was “acoustic”.  She wasn’t sure the two meant the same thing, so she texted her son.  “It’s the only way he’ll talk to me,” she said plaintively.  I nodded and told her that I’d wait.  Her phone wasn’t a smart one.  She had to click on the numbers to select the letters of the words.  It took nearly fifteen minutes for her to ask her son what he wanted and to get a straight answer from him. One quarter of an hour.  A phone call would have taken less than one minute.  “Hi, son.  Is acoustic the same as standard?  Oh, they have those in phosphor bronze, too.  Do you prefer that, or the 80/20 bronze?  Okay; see you in a few minutes.” There might even have been time for an extra, “I love you,” left over.

Do I sound bitter?  I’m really not.  I understand that sometimes you just can’t talk on the telephone.  But, he was sitting at home with nothing to do but push buttons on his phone. I have no problem with using a tool…and make no mistake, the phone is merely a tool…to achieve the purpose for which you acquired it, but it must be in a manner that accomplishes the job efficiently.  I’m not a fan of letting the tool dictate how–and when–I use it.

Do I sound old?  I will freely admit that the accusation is accurate.  Why just today, I forgot why I walked across the room at the store and had to go back to my desk, where I started from, to get a clue.  And this very afternoon, I unplugged my coffee maker to use the outlet for another device and then decided that the coffee maker had died when my coffee was cold the next time I went for a cup.  I even asked a friend to find me a good replacement for the defunct appliance.  I am, indubitably, old.  But, not so old that I have forgotten that when the things I purchased to help me do a job actually keep me from doing it well, it is time to re-examine my use of those things. 

So…how about it?  Do you have anything that has taken over your life?  Besides the smart phone. Television?  A car?  The computer?  Perhaps, it’s not a thing, but an activity.  Online gaming, shopping, even volunteering for a good cause, or exercising…all of these can rob from you in ways that you never anticipated.  Could it be that it is time for us to take back control of our lives from the stuff?  Maybe, we need to take back the reins from the urgent things we once gave in to and make the important things in our life a priority again.

I wouldn’t deign to propose what your priorities should be, but I could suggest a start.  People are important.  They’re worth laying down your phone for, or turning off the television for, or even closing your Facebook page for.  But before that, a little time for God might help to set the other priorities in order.  You see, if we start with the really important things, the others will fall into place more easily.  I remember the hokey little song we used to sing in Sunday School, it seems eons ago: “Jesus, and Others, and You; What a wonderful way to spell JOY.”  The song seems a bit silly now, but the formula still works.  Important things first…and the stuff we acquire along the way is only there to help us to do the important things better.

I’ll keep talking to my little automated assistant when I need to.  But I’m always looking for ways to use time more efficiently.  My guess is that, if I’m doing it right, shortly I should have more time for doing really valuable things, like spending time with friends and helping strangers in need. 

Maybe the little voice in the box could help with those too.  Then again, probably not.  She doesn’t seem to be much of a quick study.

I’m probably on my own there…

“One who cannot cast away a treasure at need is in fetters.”
(J.R.R.Tolkien~British author/educator~1892-1973)

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy and where thieves break in and steal.  But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven…for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
(Matthew 6:19-21~NIV)

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© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2013. All Rights Reserved.

“Hey!  Instead of just opening these fire extinguishers and emptying them out, let’s actually set them off!”  The eighteen year-old kid thought that his idea would be a lot more fun than simply doing the job they had been sent to do at the old lumberyard.  His work with the fire and safety company was certainly not boring, but at eighteen, anything he could do that livened up the day a little more was even better.

His supervisor thought for a minute and then nodded his head.  “No one’s around and it gets the job done anyway.  Let’s do it!”  They had five or six of the old chrome tanks sitting beside their service van, so the young man simply grabbed one of them and flipped it upside down.  Waiting for a second or two and seeing nothing coming from the nozzle, he exclaimed, “It’s a dud!” and started to reach for another. His superior quickly called out, “Wait.  It will come.”  Sure enough, within another second or two there was a hissing sound from the plastic nozzle and then the liquid began spewing from the tip.  He grabbed the hose and pointed the nozzle into the grass nearby, spraying it around as the fluid continued, nonstop, for a couple of minutes.  When all two and a half gallons had been expended, there was a residual noise of air escaping for a moment and then all was quiet.  It wasn’t nearly as much fun as he had expected, but it was far better than just unscrewing the steel top and manually removing the little acid canister before dumping the soda-infused water out onto the ground.  They repeated the process until all of the extinguishers were emptied and, loading them into the back of the van, headed back for the shop.

The ingenuity of the old canister fire extinguishers was pretty astounding.  And, their simplicity of design was almost mind-boggling.  The tank was filled with a couple gallons of water into which had been mixed bicarbonate of soda, essentially simple baking soda.  In the neck of the tank, there sat a little reservoir of sulfuric acid.  If the tank was left upright, it would never do anything at all.  But, if there was need, all one had to do was to upend the tank, standing it upside down.  The acid would dump out into the soda-water, resulting in an immediate production of carbon dioxide.  Not only was the CO2 a great flame-retardant, robbing the fire of it’s one absolute prerequisite–oxygen, but it also provided the aerosol effect necessary to spray the water out from the canister.  As the pressure built up inside, the water was pushed at a high rate, right out the rubber hose and, hopefully, onto the fire where it did precisely what it had been designed to do, extinguish the fire.  But, there was a reason that the men had been sent to pick up all those old extinguishers.  They were to find out why when they told their boss what they had done, moments after they arrived back at the shop.  His reaction was immediate and unexpected.

“You did what?”  His face had turned red and his eyes were glaring as the two men described the process.  “Don’t you know how dangerous those things are?”  He had returned, not long before, from a meeting with the Fire Marshalls in the state capitol.  While there, the gathering had viewed a video recording of a controlled experiment which had been performed with the old soda-acid tanks.  The lab technicians had purposely placed a plug in the hose of one and flipped it upside down inside of a test cage.  The resulting explosion had bent the bars of the cage.  When there was no avenue for release, the gases from the reaction between the acid and soda continued to build up inside until the tank itself failed.  It was even reported to the men at the safety meeting that one person had been decapitated while attempting to discharge an extinguisher which he hadn’t realized was plugged with an insect’s nest.  The potential for disaster was the main reason the old things were being removed from service.  They were all being replaced with newer, safer ones which didn’t depend on a chemical reaction that couldn’t be stopped once it was started. 

Now, the young man and his supervisor were the ones visibly shaken.  Any one of those old tanks could have had an obstruction in the hose and they might have been injured badly or even killed.  There was no possible way that they could have known if a tank had been defective.  They would only have found out as it failed.  It was the last time they ever set off any extinguisher which had been marked for taking out of service.  Sometimes, boredom is preferable to the alternative.

And, speaking of boredom, I hope this lesson in safety hasn’t brought you to that state.  There is, as usual, a method to my madness, as the red-headed lady who raised me would have said.  I’m struck by two things specifically.  The first is the incongruity of it all.  The sole purpose for a fire extinguisher is to protect the person who uses it.  Instead, there was actually the potential to maim or kill that person.  How sad it would have been, had you been the person who patented the process, to find out years later that what you intended for great good had actually done great harm.  I realize that this is often the case when people put their minds to creative use.  I think the poet had that in mind when he penned these words, centuries ago:  “The best laid schemes of mice and men, go often awry.”*  Sometimes tools intended to protect simply don’t do what they are designed to do.  When that happens, we go back to the drawing board and start anew.

I am also struck with the personal application of the sad lesson about pressure and its necessity for relief.  It is commonly understood that if we close off the release for the day-to-day stresses which build up inside of us, effectively bottling up the anger and emotion, there will come a time of reckoning when that internal stress will find its way out anyway.  We are not designed to withstand this pressure, any more than the metal tanks of those old fire extinguishers were.  The eventual release of pressure, if not done in a controlled and systematic way, will cause great damage, not only to us, but to any bystanders.  I have seen this from a much closer perspective than I care to admit on any number of occasions.  The result was not pretty, as I have unloaded on folks who had nothing whatsoever to do with the original issue.  Perhaps, you too have done this, maybe not in the too distant past.  The anger, guilt, and frustration of a lifetime can wreak havoc in families, in churches, in communities, when the explosion occurs as it inevitably does.

What is the answer?  I would suggest regular and systematic checks of the communication system.  It has long been my suspicion that if we will clear up issues when they happen, we won’t have to take care of damage control when the explosion takes place later on.  I’ve said it before, just like the mother of the blubbering toddler: “Use your words, please.”  Talking now beats apologizing later for the mess.  Many a fire has been put out with a simple stream of water, judiciously aimed at the place where the flame originates.

As always, I suspect that my solution is a bit simplistic.  You will have complicated issues to deal with which I cannot begin to fathom.  I don’t expect that talking will be the panacea for all the world’s problems.  But, it’s a start.  For the others, which are already past the easy fix, you may need to take apart the canister and separate the chemicals before more damage is done.  Sadly, not every issue can be cleaned up neatly.

For now, this windbag has released enough pressure for one night.  We’ll see what tomorrow brings. More fires to put out, one shouldn’t wonder. 

I hope the ancient equipment will be up to the task…

“In your anger, do not sin.  Don’t let the sun go down while you are still angry.”
(Ephesians 4:26~NIV)

“Anger is only one letter short of danger.”
(Anonymous)

*”To a Mouse…” by Robert Burns~1785~English translation from the original Scots language

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© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2013. All Rights Reserved.

Photo: Rachel Tayse

A last minute trip to visit my instrument technician this evening meant a few moments of extra time with the Lovely Lady, since she agreed to ride along with me.  The sixty mile round trip flew by…well, except for the few miles when those slowpokes ahead of us were going twenty miles per hour under the speed limit, but you take my meaning.  Good company and easy conversation, or even a comfortable silence with the same good company, make time speed past.  On our way back, we stopped at a little Italian restaurant to grab a bite of supper.  A container of grape jelly on the table attracted our attention and, before you know it, we were both putting a dollop of the jelly on the homemade rolls which had been served with our delicious spaghetti. As I took the first bite of mine, the flavor made me stop short.  As it frequently happens, the slightly familiar flavor took me back to a different time, more than forty years ago.

Oh, it was grape jelly all right, just not the flavor I had expected. Everyone knows that grape jelly is that gooey purple concoction that we buy in the grocery store which tastes nothing like real grapes.  The grape jelly we usually eat is the product of some obscure factory where they do unspeakable things to the grapes about which we really don’t wish to know.  Sugars, flavor additives, and even (say it isn’t so!) high fructose corn syrup, have all been injected into the overcooked mess to bring us what we know as grape jelly.  And, we eat it by the gallons with peanut butter.  Well, this jelly was nothing like that.  The only flavor you could taste was fresh grapes, seemingly just plucked from the vine.  What a surprise!  What a delicious treat!

But, I told you that the flavor took me back in time.  What I remember about that past experience was the disappointment I felt years ago when my family was visiting at a relative’s home in Kansas.  She served jelly which she had made from her own vineyard of Concord grapes.  I took one bite of the piece of bread upon which the jelly was spread and refused to eat another bite.  “There’s something wrong with this jelly,” I whispered to a brother, standing nearby.  He sniffed at his suspiciously, but ate it anyway.  I never did finish that bread, but snuck it into the trash when no one was looking.  Why, anybody knew that wasn’t what grape jelly tasted like!

Tonight, I laughed as I relived that experience from the dusty corner of my memory.  I’m so much more sophisticated now.  I’d never do that today.  I know what’s good food and what isn’t.  But then I remember it–my comfort food.  The one meal of which I never tire, and which I will still be eating into my dotage, as long as I can so much as gum my food.  Macaroni and cheese…from the blue box with yellow writing on it.  Sure, I’ll wait while you go check your cupboard to see if it’s the one you like too.  Oh.  Already back?  Well, let’s move on then, shall we?

Years ago, we went out to eat at a very nice restaurant.  Everyone said to us before we went,  “You have to try their homemade mac and cheese.  It’s the best that anyone makes anywhere.”  We asked our server about it.  Yes, it was world famous.  Five different cheeses used in the making.  Garlic, and a few other spices which I can’t remember…and really don’t care about.  We would be overwhelmed.  Certainly then, we’ll have two servings of that.  The dish arrived.  Crunchy on the top, large creamy macaroni pasta, with delicious cheese.  I’m not speaking for her, but I was completely underwhelmed.  I have tried the mac and cheese at a number of different places, every time a friend has recommended it.  I don’t care for any of it, except–you guessed it–the stuff from the blue box.

You see, I grew up with the blue box.  In my experience, all good mac and cheese should taste just like that shrunken pasta, boiled and mixed with powdered cheese food, along with some milk and a little butter.  Mmmmm!  Heaven couldn’t be much better than this!  But, we’ll get to that discussion later.  The point I am making is that when we have been taught (and then had the teaching reinforced by years of experience) that something is the way it should be, we have a hard time believing that even the real article is any good at all.  Given the option, we’ll choose the plastic, fake product every time.  Once in awhile, our eyes are opened and we grasp the difference, embracing the genuine item for what it is.  When that happens, we almost never want to go back.

Maybe now would be a good time to talk about heaven, as I said we would.  In C.S. Lewis’ final book of “The Chronicles Of Narnia”, entitled “The Last Battle”, he describes Aslan’s Country, obviously his analogy for heaven.  Funny thing, though.  It’s just like Narnia, except more vivid and more beautiful.  The further in they go, the better it gets, but it is still a more beautiful picture of the world they have left behind.  I’m not sure that heaven will really be like that, but the Apostle does talk to us about seeing dimly now, as in a mirror. (You have to remember that their mirrors weren’t nearly as good as ours back then, distorting images and reflecting badly).  Then, he says, we shall see clearly as if face to face.  It appears that what we have now is merely a poor reflection of what we shall have then, just as with the store-purchased grape jelly and the fresh made jelly.

It seems that perhaps we shouldn’t be developing quite as much of a taste for the substitute items we have come to accept, and sometimes love, here.  We may find that we have been fooled cruelly.  One of my favorite lines from that esoteric movie, “The Matrix”, is the one uttered by the character named Morpheus, as he tries to convince the protagonist, Neo, that the world he sees around him isn’t real.  “You think that’s air you’re breathing now?” I am struck that we grow too attached to the trappings of this life and don’t realize that the most important things, the real ones, are those which the Apostle mentions in the same paragraph as his mirror anology.  “And now, there abide faith, hope, and love.  But, the greatest of these is love.”

Now there’s something real to sink your teeth into.  How about it?  What’s important to you?  What tastes good?  Feels good?  Looks good?  Do you still think it has any real value in the bigger context?

I’ll leave you to work out the details.  Your fake things won’t be the same as mine.  I’ll only mess it up if I try to list the specifics. You will know them much better than I. 

Besides that, I’m headed home pretty soon.  I’m not sure, but I think there might be some leftover mac and cheese in the refrigerator that’s calling my name.

 “When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.  But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.
(I Corinthians 13:11-13~NASB)

“Error is always more busy than truth.”
(Hosea Ballou~American theologian~1771-1852)

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© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2013. All Rights Reserved.

The Lovely Lady took care of our grandchildren this evening.  Oh, I was there, but they know that Grandma is the fun one, the one who has plans for their entertainment.  The old man is good for a snuggle and a quick read through a book, but he couldn’t pull off an evening’s amusement if his life were in the balance.  I snoozed in my easy chair while they painted water pictures in the next room.

Later, I came to and realized that the voices were farther away, in the front living room.  I pried myself out of the recliner and headed up to see what their entertainment coordinator had cooked up for them now.  I was amused to see (and hear) the excitement of the kids as they played a game of “Cootie”, as many of you know, a game which has been around for over sixty years.  They were shouting out the numbers which were rolled with the die; the number determining which body part they received for the little bug they were assembling.  Legs, tongue, antennae, and eyes…all were pieces they anxiously desired as they awaited the proper number to be rolled when their turn came.

It was bedlam.  The younger ones gained and lost interest in a matter of seconds, depending on how near it was to their time to roll.  One of the girls tried to just set the die down on the number she wanted instead of rolling it.  Then the boys began to use their half-finished bugs to do battle.  Parts were dropping off, and heads were becoming disconnected from bodies.  It was obvious that the rules didn’t much matter in this arena.  They were making it up as they went and enjoying the results just fine, thank you.  The only problem was that the game would never be finished at this rate, so the activities director called a halt to the shenanigans and brought some semblance of order to the affair once more.  Putting the game pieces back to rights and settling down to the task of rolling the die, the game was soon finished, with one of the boys completing his bug first. You see, the Lovely Lady understands that you gotta know the rules.

I was amused at their lack of knowledge of the rules (and the dismal absence of concern at the same), but then I remembered one of life’s most embarrassing moments way back when.  I thought that I understood the game of baseball, being the veteran (at eight years old) of a good number of games in the neighborhood’s vacant lots.  I was convinced that I could play with the best of the boys at my summer camp, too.  On that hot June afternoon, I had waited in the blistering sun through several batters ahead of me, and now it was my turn to step up to the plate.  Swinging the bat to warm up, I stood, almost in the batter’s box (what was this rectangle drawn here for?) and after the first ball whizzed past as I swung the bat as hard as I could, turned to listen as the camp director suggested that I had to keep my feet in the box or I would be called out.  I was just digesting that little piece of information when the ball zoomed toward me once more.  I swung the bat–a little half-swing, since I was worried about stepping out over the line near the plate.  “Strike Two!” called the balding director behind the plate.  He was not only the coach for every boy out there, he was the umpire as well.  I was ready for the next one and swung with all my might…a foot ahead of the ball.  My motion was enough to rattle the catcher though, and he dropped the ball.  The coach/umpire/director, taking advantage of a teaching moment, called out two orders, “Run!” and, “Throw the ball to first base!”  Well, the ball was right beside my foot, so I picked it up and threw it directly to the boy covering first base, putting myself out when I should have been running.  The director couldn’t help but laugh, not in a mean way, but a number of the other boys also laughed; their merriment definitely not intended to be kind.  It was a hard lesson, but it taught me again that you gotta know the rules.

Knowing the rules doesn’t just apply in sports and board games, though.  I remember a day many years ago, when a little neighbor boy was visiting in our home.  We evidently had a few more things for our children to remember or, at least different things than he was used to, and he was fed up.  After I reminded him that, “We don’t do that at our house,” one time too many, he responded with his observation.  “You have a lot of rules here, don’t you?”  I chuckled and then enlightened him (I thought).  “Johnny, you’ll have rules to obey all your life.  Even after you’re a grown-up, there will be rules that you’ll have to follow.”  The little fellow looked at me, disbelieving, for about thirty seconds.  I could almost see the wheels going around inside his head as all the possible arguments for that statement were turned over and examined to see if they would fly.  The disappointment of learning this awful truth was plainly written on his face as he finally just turned on his heels and stalked out the front door without saying another word.  I could only conclude that the horror of a world with perpetual rules was too much for his young brain to take in.  I was a little sorry to have shocked him so, but more than a little amused at his reaction.

We hear so much today about free spirits, thinking outside the box, and changing paradigms, and we seem to have forgotten that the rules still apply.  Our society pays the price as we descend, seemingly, into a sort of anarchy.  There’s no reason to be discouraged though, because our Creator has instilled His rules into creation itself and the rules will be obeyed or the consequences paid. The rules, spoken or otherwise, enforce themselves upon us as we walk through this world.  I guess that line of thought may be a bit esoteric for this venue, and since I have no intention of getting into arguments about philosophy, I’ll aim a little bit closer to home for a moment or two.

Recognizing that most of my readers are followers of Christ, I want to suggest that we each have rules which we must follow in our faith.  One might argue that we are not under Law, but that doesn’t change the truth of who we are and Whom we follow.  At a minimum, we live under the law of love, meaning that we must love our God with everything we have in us, and we must love our neighbor as we love ourselves.  It seems too simple, doesn’t it?  The thing is that the rules that come from those simple two statements will take a lifetime, and more, to fulfill.  Even under Grace, the rules are laid out for us to “play by”.  Winning depends on it.

With the children earlier today, when no rules are followed, confusion and bedlam was the result.  When I didn’t understand the rules of baseball many years ago, I was disqualified by my own actions.  Truly, we have rules to follow all of our lives.  It is up to us to study and understand which rules apply to the course which has been laid out for us.  Do you have the Rulebook close at hand?  It would be a good idea if we put it into use.

Otherwise, we might find ourselves picking up the very baseball we should have been outrunning to the base.

You gotta know the rules!

“Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.”
(Galatians 6:2~NIV)

“Friends are helpful, not only because they will listen to us, but because they will laugh at us; through them we learn a little objectivity, a little modesty, a little courtesy; We learn the rules of life and become better players of the game.”
(Will Durant~American writer/historian/philosopher~1885-1981)

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2013. All Rights Reserved.

Gasping for air, the old guy with skinny legs trots along the side of the pavement.  Three and a half miles!  Surely he has gone further than that!  His head is spinning, but he thinks back…way back.  It was something over a half-hour ago when he started out on the loop through the little town in which he lives.  He remembers feeling better than he does now.  He remembers the euphoria of stretching and anticipating the ease with which he would make this run.  In his head, he had told himself to start out slow and gradually pick up the pace.  Just as if he had been running a race, he didn’t want to be a “rabbit”, using up his reserves too quickly and running out of energy long before he finished the course he intended to cover.  The plan worked well for awhile.

But, like all plans, he had made changes in his as events unfolded.  Adjustments, he called them in his head.  Yeah, that’s it, adjustments.  Running the first few blocks had felt so good, until he reached the ice cream shop where folks (most of them overweight, he remarked to himself) were gathered outside around picnic tables to enjoy the late evening snacks before them.  Arrogantly, he thought to himself,  “I hope they notice how conscientious I am.  Maybe I should speed up.”  And, he did. 

Rounding the corner, he couldn’t help but notice the folks who sat on their porches or stood in their yards as he ran past. He wondered if perhaps they would think he was not very good at this.  He thought that maybe it would help if he ran faster.  So, he did.

Up ahead of him, a young lady was jogging along the same sidewalk, keeping about the same distance in front for a few blocks.  That wouldn’t do!  He should speed up and pass her!  That’s exactly what he did.  And, he wasn’t even half way around the course he had determined to run.  But now, he was in front of her.  He couldn’t slow down and allow her to pass him up again.  He pushed on, his legs starting to show signs of cramping.

And so it went, for the whole exercise time.  There were people watching…well, probably not, but you never know…and he couldn’t be seen to waver.  Time and again, he wanted to slow down, but someone might see and think poorly of him.  On he went, pushing as fast as he could.  Now, here he was, nearing the end of his run and he was exhausted.  This was the time when he always kicked in the afterburners, speeding along the road near home to jet into the back yard.  He always said the two words in his head as he did it, but not tonight.  Not tonight.  He had nothing left.  The words went unsaid.  And, he walked the last quarter mile, trudging along in defeat.

Finish strong!  The words are imprinted deep inside every one of us.  Finish strong!  I have watched athletes again and again throughout my life; athletes who appear to have used up every ounce of strength they have, only to push one more time, just enough to win the race or make the final touchdown, or reach that final fly ball in the outfield.  The rest of the game doesn’t matter much if you can’t finish strong.  I have also watched on many occasions as ball teams sat on leads they had racked up early in the game.  It’s not a good strategy.  Over and over, to their chagrin, the opposing team had what it took to finish strong, overcoming the deficit which had been built up against them.  And the team sitting on the lead?  They had nothing; no answer to the inner strength that said, “We will not be defeated.  We will not quit!” 

In every single endeavor we will undertake in our lifetimes, there will be the need to finish strong.  We won’t always hit the mark.  In public speaking, if you don’t have a good finish, what you said before your conclusion won’t matter.  The listeners will never remember it.  When you perform music, if you have no endurance left to end the piece, the audience will be left unmoved and unfulfilled by the entire performance.  I have listened as marching bands filled the stadium up with beautiful and spectacularly loud music at the beginning of the halftime performance, only to lose volume, disturbing the air with nothing but “blats” and splattered notes at the end, because the players were exhausted and the “chops” were gone.  To put it mildly, it was not inspiring.  The musicians had amazing talent and ability; they simply didn’t have the fortitude to finish.

Finish strong!  My guess is that you don’t need me to lecture about preparation for the event in which you’re participating.  Practice, training, study?  You know all about those.  They are an essential part of finishing strong, but I’m going to leave those to a different discussion.  I’m hoping that for today, I’ll be able to finish strong myself, without the embarrassment of running out of juice too soon.  With that in mind, I’m going to head for the finish line right about now.

Follow your plan.  Set your course and run it at the pace you know will allow you to finish.  It is possible that folks may criticize if you’re not moving along as quickly as they expect.  More likely, their criticism is only in your head and they won’t notice at all.  That said, they will notice if you drop out, or if you barely stumble across the finish line.

Another man of a certain age spoke with me today about his concerns of doing something in this life worth leaving for the next generation.  All I could tell him is what I’m saying here tonight.  The course behind us is, indeed, behind us and gone beyond recall.  We have the remainder of the course still ahead.  Discouragement and regrets from the past are weights that will slow us down as we get to the point where we need to be “kicking”.  Throw them off!

In my mind’s eye, I can see the runners turning the last corner and heading for the line.  I think that I’ve still got some life left in me.  How about it?

C’mon!  Race you to the end!  Let’s finish strong together.

“I’m strong to the finish, 
‘Cause I eats me spinach.
I’m Popeye the sailor man!”
(“Popeye the Sailor Man” by Sammy Lerner~1933)

“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, and I have remained faithful.”
(2 Timothy 4:7~NLT)

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2013. All Rights Reserved.