Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet, but one thing I do; forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press toward the mark for the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. –the apostle Paul in Philipians 3:12-13

    Somebody else got there first!

     In 1911, Robert Falcon Scott led an expedition in a race to be the first to reach the South Pole.  After overcoming incredible difficulties, Scott and his group reached their goal, only to discover Roald Amundsen had beaten them there.  In his journal that day, Scott wrote: "Great God!  This is an awful place and terrible enough for us to have labored to it without the reward of priority (being first)."

     Worse was yet to come.  One by one, the members of the small team accompanying Scott lost their lives in the return journey, until only Scott was left.  The final words in his journal are haunting for their lonely surrender: "It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more…"

     When the apostle Paul penned his words in Philippians 3, he knew keenly the impact of his own failures.  Likely many of the Christians he taught, encouraged and directed later in his life had been persecuted by him before his encounter with Christ.  Many were the reminders, it would seem, of the days when he sought to hurt the very people he now served.

     Yet Paul could write with fervor of his ability to set aside the past because his eyes and heart and mind and actions were now set on a goal that swept away even the deepest of personal failures---a relationship with God made possible by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

     How many of us are battling the same demons Scott or the apostle Paul did, having pressed ourselves so hard in our work lives toward a goal that seems always just out of reach?  How many who reach that goal discover the price we’ve paid is the marring or destruction of the very things we should have held most precious…our families, our integrity, our faith!

     For our work journeys to have purpose; for our labors to balance the important and the urgent with the tedious and the tiresome; for our hearts to have hope when the fruit of our efforts is invisible; our eyes and our hearts and our minds and our actions must be fixed on God.  Then the path becomes less lonely, the failures become more bearable, and the fruit becomes His to accomplish; through us—or sometimes despite us—but always alongside us.

--Randy Kilgore

rkilgore@marketplacenetwork.com

www.marketplacenetwork.com