Finishing Well

I enjoy watching golf on TV. Last Sunday afternoon I witnessed the most painful thing I have ever witnessed in 30 years of watching golf on TV. I tuned in for the final round of the PGA Championship which was played at The Atlanta Athletic Club, John's Creek, GA. For those of you unfamiliar with professional golf, most golf tournaments are four days. Each day the players play 18 holes. They add the scores each day. The player with the lowest score after four rounds wins. Typically the tournaments start on Thursday and end on Sunday. There are four tournaments a year that are called "Majors" (the PGA Championship is one of them). They are the most prestigious tournaments and therefore the hardest to win.

Thirty four old Jason Dufner played great the first three days, and he was having a great round Sunday. He carried a four stroke lead to the tee of the fifteenth hole. He had a four stroke lead with four holes to play in the tournament. He had this one in the bag. Here is a guy who had never won on the PGA tour at all, and he is leading one of the most prestigious tournaments by four strokes with only four holes to play. That is when it all started to fall apart. Dufner bogeyed three of the last four holes and ended up losing the tournament. For the first 68 holes of the tournament, he dazzled the field. But in the end he fell apart. He did not finish well.

Hebrews 12:1 Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance, and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.


 Notice that the bible says we are to run with endurance. Golf tournaments are long in comparison to other sporting events. A football game is over in about three hours and a baseball game is about the same. Most basketball games are done in about two hours, but a golf tournament lasts four days. Golf tournaments are analogous to the Christian life. The Christian life is not a sprint, it is a marathon. And it matters how we finish. More and more my prayer is these days, "Lord help me to finish the Christian life well." As I get older (just turned 45 August 10th) I find myself thinking about that more and more. What a tragedy it would be to run most of the race well, only to blow it at the end.

Lord help us all to run with endurance, Lord help us to finish well.