Finish Well

by Jared Johnson

People don’t remember how we came; they remember how we leave.

In the e2 office, that sentiment is often shared with church elders and preachers when staffing/personnel come up in coaching calls. 

While it’s true of employment, that same sentiment is also true – even more so – of how we leave this life.  Sometimes it’s fun to recount stories of pregnancies, rushing to the hospital, birth with or without complications, etc.  It’s easy to share the joy and happiness of such occasions.  However, how we come into the world is remembered much less than how we leave it.  I have no idea what the birth stories of my grandparents were.  But I remember, vividly, being called while a senior at Lincoln Christian College to go to Michigan as my grandmother was passing.  I remember that of the three boys, only my dad happened to be with her when she finally passed in the small hours of the morning; his brothers were exhausted, physically and emotionally; both were home sleeping after days of “keeping watch.”  There are some well-known birth stories in the Bible; there are even more numerous and well-known stories of leaving this world.  When I say “Samson,” do you think first of his providential birth story, or of how he took 3,000 enemies of God’s people with him into death?

People don’t remember how we came; they remember how we leave. 

Dr Wayne Shaw recently “left well.”  Though I graduated from Lincoln (2001), where Dr Shaw gave so much of his Kingdom service, I don’t ever remember meeting him personally.  He wrote, 21 years ago, about his “magnificent obsession” of finishing well.  Enjoy this piece he wrote for Christian Standard about finishing well:

https://christianstandard.com/2021/07/throwback-thursday-wayne-shaw-and-finishing-well/