More than once, I’ve had such close calls with death that I felt the thinness of the wall between this world and the next. Those moments on the edge of my mortality — whether underwater or in a war zone — were at first breathtaking with suddenness and then sobering with what-ifs. But I was too busy living to think much about dying, and soon those close calls were in the rearview mirror.

However, my latest death threat is no near-miss. Nor can I outrun it. Successive cancer diagnoses in 2019, 2020, and 2021 have struck hard. My situation, though, is no different from what all of us will face because cancer is just another way to die. And one kindness from God I’ve seen (and I can count many of his kindnesses to me in this stretch of my journey) is that cancer has given me a clearer focus on the finish line.

I want to make every stride count — every day meaningful. I want to finish strong. As Eric Liddell, the Olympic gold-medal sprinter turned missionary, famously said, “I run the first two hundred meters as hard as I can. Then for the second two hundred meters, with God’s help, I run harder.” That’s how I want to run the race I’m in right now.

Still, as I pen these lines, I know I haven’t yet finished my course, and I strongly feel Spurgeon’s warning:

The trumpet still plays the notes of war. You cannot sit down and put the victory wreath on your head. You do not have a crown. You still must wear the helmet and carry the sword. You must watch, pray, and fight. Expect your last battle to be the most difficult, for the enemy’s fiercest charge is reserved for the end of the day. (Beside Still Waters, 2)

I am learning much through this experience, and God is certainly increasing my faith; but I admit it’s an uneven work because I am often a poor student. Thankfully, I have a patient Teacher. So, as I continue to press ahead in my race, there are three things I can tell you.

1. Number Your Days

The prayer of Moses in Psalm 90 is full of breathtaking awe and wonder over the God who is “from everlasting to everlasting” (verse 2). The Rock of Ages does not age. He was God before time, he is God who enters time, and he will be God when all our clocks and calendars, histories and monuments are no more.

But then, in cosmic contrast, there is another kind of breathtaking awe over just how brief our time is. Moses says our lives are “like grass” (verse 5) — here today and gone tomorrow. Even if we are granted a full life with enough birthday candles to set off the smoke alarm, yet the fire is extinguished with a breath, and we soon “fly away” (verse 10). So caught between brevity and eternity, we ask God to “teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom” (verse 12). Of course, none of us can add up in advance the number of days we will be given. But what we are to remember is that there is a number, and we can’t add a single hour to it (Luke 12:25).

We may imagine finishing well to look like a life full of years, perhaps like Jacob’s. “When Jacob finished commanding his sons, he drew up his feet into the bed and breathed his last and was gathered to his people” (Genesis 49:33). That’s a nice hope but an unlikely scenario, since death rarely operates on our timetable, and we don’t know whether we will be given ninety years or nineteen. Our finish lines often come suddenly, with little or no warning.