Press Toward the Mark

About 8pm last night, I locked the chapel and cycled home along the dark lanes. All Sunday there had been a thickish fog which seemed to intensify as the hours passed. The ride home was more difficult than usual, but not impossible. I was tired from preaching thrice and sometimes had but ten yards’ sight but I took it slowly and know the lanes well enough. Yet I had a few close shaves with sharp corners I thought I knew better and the many potholes I have learned to navigate appeared more suddenly. Indeed, a brown object in the middle of the road took me by surprise and I only just missed it; I hoped it was a deposit of horse droppings rather than some dead thing. Oh, and let’s not forget the hare. He ran out, narrowly missing me by a few feet. My brakes are squeaking, and their swift application must have sounded not unlike Gabriel’s trumpet, which helped his escape. Otherwise, I made it home with no incident.

Life feels like that journey. We cannot see far ahead, and we are sometimes taken by surprise by dangers darting from the side, potentially derailing us. We use what little visibility we have to plan our way in the hope that we shall make it to the end without getting lost. Yet we Christians have the sure and certain hope of Jesus Christ; whether we live or die, prosper or suffer, we receive the strength and light we need for each stage of the journey. We are not given details of the finish line, nor even all the twists and turns of the narrow way we follow, but we shall indeed get to the end, whatever comes our way.

Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:13-14