Few Run Well to the End Mark Reasoner

Few Run Well to the End
　　　　　　Mark Reasoner

★１９５８年秋、私が日本クリスチャン・カレッジ１年生の時でした。
同級生の雨宮神学生の紹介で、二人の夫人宣教師カナダ人プライス先生とアメリカ人ジーンズ先生の埼玉県寄居の開拓伝道のお手伝いをすることになりったのです。
　その関係で、当時横浜にあった宣教団事務所で、Rollin Reasoner先生と最初にお会いしました。
　この出会いは、私の生涯に大きな意味を持ち、先生方の４人のお子様方それぞれとの交わりに波及しているのです。
　今回、末子のMark Reasoner先生が一文を送ってくださいました。アメリカの神学校で新約学の教授です。今後の展開に期待します。

One week ago, on the same day that Pastor Miyamura was attending the thanksgiving service for Johnny and Anna Siebert, my sister Sarah and brother Paul moved my parents into a home for elderly people where they will get more care. My parents' short-term memories are failing, and they can get confused in matters of daily life.
Sarah, the firstborn daughter, and Paul, the oldest son, have been taking good care of Rollin and Esther. My parents live in Cambridge, Minnesota, in the same town in which Paul lives, and only about 16 kilometers from where Sarah lives.

When my father was younger, even younger than I am now, he used to quote a saying that had impressed him: "Few men run well to the end." The saying captures the idea that it is difficult to live a whole life of faithful obedience and growth. In his prayer life and in his encouragement to others, my father still serves his Lord, and this is a blessing to those around him.

Early Christians have preserved for us the record of an old man who was martyred for his faith, Polycarp. Polycarp had been a student of the apostle John, and was the pastor of the church in Smyrna, a city in what is now the western part of Turkey. In the second century book called The Martyrdom of Polycarp, we read how Polycarp, at the age of 86, moved outside the city and spent his time praying for all people and for churches around the world (5:1). When he was finally discovered by the police, he asked that they sit down to eat in his house, while he prayed for two hours for everyone he had ever encountered in his life, and for the whole church throughout the world (7:2 - 8:1). Polycarp's last days and his martyrdom, sometime around 155 to 160, definitely show us someone who ran well to the end.

May God give all of us the grace and strength, like Polycarp and in our time, Johnny and Anna Siebert, to run well to the end.