The End Arrives Quickly

More than once, life’s fragility has pressed close through drowning near-misses and time spent in war zones, moments when death brushed past and the thin veil between this world and eternity became almost visible. In those moments, mortality felt real, even urgent. But then life marched on, busy and full, and the close calls faded into memory.

Until now.

Multiple cancer diagnoses one after another, year after year have brought a different kind of clarity. This time, it’s not a near-miss. This time, it’s not something I can outrun. And in this latest chapter, God has been kind to give me what I lacked in earlier brushes with death focus. Not fear, not despair, but a keen awareness that the finish line may come fast and that I want every stride until then to matter.

Here are three truths that are helping me finish well, no matter how fast the end comes.

1. Number Your Days

In Psalm 90, Moses contrasts the eternity of God with the brevity of man: “You return man to dust . . . our years come to an end like a sigh” (Psalm 90:3,9). Even the longest lives, he says, are like grass flourishing one morning, gone by evening. So he prays, “Teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom” (v.12).

Whether we live 90 years or 19, our lives are short and often shorter than we expect. We imagine finishing life like Jacob, drawing his feet into bed with final words to loved ones. But most finish lines don’t come gently. They come suddenly. A diagnosis, a phone call, a last breath we didn’t know was last.

So the best way to finish life well is to finish today well. To live each day as a sprint to the Savior. The final stretch may be invisible, but that doesn’t make it less near. We are all “a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes” (James 4:14). And that reality is not meant to haunt us it’s meant to free us.

Live as if your next step could be the last not in fear, but in wisdom, in urgency, in Christ-centered passion.

2. Follow Closely

If life is fleeting, shouldn’t we spend our days carefully preserving it? Shouldn’t we aim to stay safe, take fewer risks, protect what we have?

Not according to Jesus.

“Whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 16:25). You can’t keep your life you can only spend it. So spend it well.

To follow Christ is to pick up your cross daily. It is to lay down ease, comfort, control, and even safety for something eternally more precious. And this call isn’t only for missionaries or martyrs. It’s for every Christian who dares to speak truth in a world allergic to it, to show kindness when it’s costly, to live holy in a culture of compromise.

Following Jesus closely means enduring suffering not as a punishment, but as participation in His story. Elisabeth Elliot wrote, “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.”

This kind of loss doesn’t always make sense. Chemo, betrayal, disappointment, or heartbreak may not fit our understanding of God’s plan but they fit the pattern of Christ’s life. And when we follow Him through suffering, we follow Him also into resurrection.

“That I may know him . . . and the fellowship of his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.” (Philippians 3:10–11)

That’s the finish line: not survival, but resurrection. So we follow, not because the road is easy, but because He is worthy.

3. Remember We Have a Great Savior

As the apostle Paul sat in prison, long after the dramatic days of his early ministry, his body worn and freedom stripped, he still pressed on: “I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:14).

His body was bound, but his hope was boundless because he remembered what mattered most: “Christ Jesus has made me his own” (v.12).

That’s how we finish: not with a polished résumé, not with a storybook ending, but with an anchor in a great Savior.

John Newton, blind and frail in his final years, summed it up beautifully:
“My memory is nearly gone; but I remember two things: that I am a great sinner, and that Christ is a great Saviour.”

Newton’s failing health did not shake his hope, because his hope wasn’t in his health. It was in Christ the One who keeps us, even when we can no longer hold on ourselves.

We will falter. Our strength will fade. But our Savior remains.

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

The Sprint to Glory

Cancer may seem like the end, but it’s just the beginning. The finish line is not death the finish line is Christ. And that finish comes fast. When it does, will we be found running toward Him, arms outstretched in trust, heart burning with love?

Every breath you take is one step closer to forever. Make each one count. Spend your life. Follow Jesus. And when your race is done, know that He will meet you at the finish not with disappointment, but with open arms and everlasting joy.

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