Passing the Baton

They beat me! I knew the day would inevitably arrive, but it was still difficult to process. I stood there blinking, humiliated. They beat me. All three of them!

On a hot summer day in my 46th year on earth, I took my three school-aged sons jogging around a lake near our home. None of them had ever outstripped me in anything athletically related. Ever. But as we readied for our run, they seemed to collectively sense that this was their day. They stood quietly like vultures circling a dying man. It was pitiful.

I first cued in to their sense of pending conquest when they decided to give me a head start. A head start! Who on earth did they think they were? I could blow them away—always had. Slightly miffed, as I bolted off the starting line ahead of them, I determined to prove that their estimation of my physical eclipse was not only premature but delusional.

The day was blisteringly hot and they knew the conditions would affect me more than them. I was also saddled with a bum ankle at the time (admittedly, my handicap had more to do with excess cargo than with a bad wheel), but as I took off down the trail I was determined to conquer. I expected them to pass me early in unbridled enthusiasm, but believed that through skillful persistence and superior athleticism I’d beat them to the finish—and teach them a thing or two. “Give me a head start?! Give me a break!”

I was not ten per cent of the distance around that stinking trail when I was unceremoniously overtaken by all three of my progeny. I immediately realized my predicament when they did not burst past me with puppy-dog exuberance that was certain to fade somewhere before the halfway point. To my chagrin, they glided past me with confident, buoyant gaits that silently announced, “You’re toast, old man.”

My only hope was that they would fade—at least my youngest. But the only fading that took place was by the dude with the gray hair. I fell so far behind I lost visual contact before they crossed the finish line. In one fateful run I was not only shut out, I was blown away. The boys who had never beaten me at anything, collectively whipped my tail on the same day. My humiliation was total.

The image of those three T-shirted backs slowly fading into the distance ahead of me as they bounced along the trail is etched into my memory banks. It was a harsh taste of reality. Yet in another sense it was a beautiful thing to behold. Aging bodies remind us that we are temporal beings. Death stalks us with unrelenting persistence. But when we see the trajectory of our vitality curving downward on the graph of life, how satisfying to see that curve eventually intersected by the upward trajectory of our children’s vitality.

Yet this satisfaction proves ultimately empty unless parents bequeath to their children a cause for which to run. As we hand the baton to the next generation, we must ask ourselves with level-headed frankness whether or not we are passing on something worth passing on.

If all you impart to your children is a quest to stay alive and pursue temporal well being—as essential as such a quest is—you will experience nothing more than the insipid and dissipating pleasure of a hedonist making room for the next generation of wind chasers. Your death will merely clear room for others to take up space on the planet for a time. What lasting joy could possibly derive from such an empty existence?

As my children ready to run on ahead of me in life, I find great satisfaction and joy in knowing I’ve tapped into the global, macro-program of Jesus’ mission to transform sinners and create a people for His kingdom and glory. By the sheer grace of God I’ve experienced the transforming power and fraternal joy of the message that Jesus came as God-in-flesh to earth, lived a sinless life in evidence of His divine nature and His heavenly Father’s approval, died as the sacrificial Lamb in the stead of sinners, defeated death by His bodily resurrection, reigns today from heaven’s throne and is coming again to set up His earthly rule, judging the living and the dead.

I take no pride in this. I’m just a beggar sharing with other beggars where to find bread. Yet I thank God for liberating me from the micro-program of self-love and including me in a global family which has owned the noble heritage of proclaiming the glories of Christ and living for His kingdom for the past two millennia—living in the light of His saving grace and honoring the revelation of His infinite wisdom.

On that warm summer day, I came to terms with the reality that I will probably never even keep up with my sons again. (Thankfully they have a younger sister whose upward vitality graph is yet to cross my downward trajectory—I think). As I laboriously rounded the last turn in the trail, there they stood, respectfully waiting for me to finish. How I pray they will each find me waiting for them on the day they enter eternity and that we will celebrate together having run the race of life for the glory of our risen Savior. That is a race worth running—a baton worth passing on to one’s children—at any cost.

Dan Miller has served as the Senior Pastor of Eden Baptist Church since 1989. He graduated from Pillsbury Baptist Bible College with a B.S. degree in 1984 and his graduate degrees include a M.A. in History from Minnesota State University, Mankato, and the M.Div. and Th.M. from Central Baptist Theological Seminary. He is nearing completion of D.Min. studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Dan is married to Beth and the Lord has blessed them with four children: Ethan, Levi, Reed and Whitney.