ToddGaddisBook_October2023_8.5x5.5.indd

to use it.Why? Perhaps he assumed three was enough. Maybe he thought it was just a waste of time, it was beneath him, or he just didn’t feel like it. One can’t say for sure.What we do know, however, is what this incomplete performance signifies. Shooting three arrows instead of five or six symbolizes an incomplete effort, an unfinished task. During retirement years, some have a tendency to “mail it in.”The temptation is to hand it off to the young people and let them carry the weight. “I’ve done my due,” the older folks might say, when asked to take a position in the church. Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, “Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him two” (Matthew 5:41). I have fond memories of my grandmother leading my Sunday School “junior department, ” as it was called back in the day.What stands out most is a hymn we must have sung almost every week, Our Best, by Salathiel C. Kirk. The chorus went as follows: Every work for Jesus will be blest, But He asks from everyone his best. Our talents may by few, these may be small, But unto Him is due our best, our all. Oh Lord, as the years race by, may we not slip into mediocrity. Finally, grasp the fact that though you’ve stopped breathing, you haven’t stopped influencing. Fast forward, perhaps several months, to the point that the flesh of a buried Elisha had begun to decompose. As another funeral party was in the process of burying a man, they fell under the threat of an enemy and cast the body into the grave

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