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Real Answers™
dl153
Copyright: © 2009 Donald E. Lindman
650 words

IN LIFE, AS IN FOOTBALL, THE MOST IMPORTANT QUARTER IS THE LAST ONE

By: Don Lindman

The game of my life is in the last quarter.

I don’t know when that quarter began.  I got up to get a snack from the refrigerator and when I returned it had already started.  Occasionally life offers an overtime period as a short extension, but when you’re 75 years old you’re definitely in the last quarter of life. 

That’s okay.  I don’t usually watch sports until the last quarter anyway.  The real drama, the last minute heroics, the game-winning plays are in that final quarter.  To me, the earlier part of the game is just set-up. 

This last quarter is when life becomes real.  I can look back and better evaluate what was important and what wasn’t in the first three periods.  And with the clock inexorably ticking down, each play takes on added importance.

Some people panic.  They can’t handle last quarter pressure, the awareness that time is running out and that if there is something you need to do you need to do it now.

For me it focuses the mind.  I have a better idea of what is important and what can be thrown away.  I have a better perspective on the past and a clearer sensitivity to the future.

I know now that I won’t be remembered as a famous preacher, another Billy Graham.  Nor will I be an Ernest Hemingway or Donald Trump.  I used to dream of playing professional baseball, but that’s long gone, too.

Enough time has gone by so that I can identify some plays I executed well in previous quarters and some players who I helped draw closer to the Lord.  That’s a good feeling.

But how about the last quarter?  What will I do with this most crucial part of the game?

An increasing number of things I used to enjoy are no longer physically available to me.  Tennis is one example.  Getting down on the floor and romping with children is another.

But I still can write.  I have more time to drink a leisurely cup of coffee with friends, to enjoy music and art, to read.  I have time to volunteer for tasks that will make my community and the lives of other people better in admittedly small, but still important, ways.

I will continue to find the humor in life, including my own.  If you can’t laugh at yourself you have a very inflated opinion of how important you are.

I will try to enjoy my wife, my son, and my granddaughter more.  Harry Chapin’s song “Cat’s in the Cradle,” with its description of people too busy to relate to each other, has haunted me for years.  Now, in the last quarter, I have an opportunity to change that in my own life.

And while I am increasingly conscious of the clock winding down, I’m less likely to turn everything into a crisis.  Many things I face in this last quarter are repeats in one form or another of challenges I faced earlier.  The Lord took me through them then, and he will do it now. 

A lot of people who still are playing earlier quarters haven’t developed that long a perspective.  The Bible says, “In all things God is working for good together with those who love him.”  I’ve seen that work out in my life many times over the past 75 years.

When the scoreboard clock runs out I will look back with satisfaction on the game I played.  Along with the legendary sports writer Grantland Rice I believe that what’s important is not “that you won or lost—but how you played the game.”  I want to play the game in such a way that when I pass from death to life eternal the Lord will welcome me with the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant; enter into the joy of your Lord.”  That’s my game plan in the final quarter.

"Real Answers™" furnished courtesy of The Amy Foundation Internet Syndicate. To contact the author or The Amy Foundation, write or E-mail to: P. O. Box 16091, Lansing, MI 48901-6091; amyfoundtn@aol.com

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