We need to remember that there is a goal, that life is not meaningless. The world seeks to tell us that there is a goal, but the goal of the world is much more on the side of the fact that there is work to be done and that that is all weighed down on you. “You must do to others as you would have them do to you,” the Western world tells us. “You must be excellent to each other,” as Bill and Ted say, as the meaning of life in their film. And it’s all this pressure on us to do good, to do good to the environment, to do good to one another, to be straining forward. But without any of the work done by Christ.
Christians are to be different. We are to strain forward, but we strain forward knowing that the race is already won for us by Christ. So, it’s simply following in the trail that He set for us, a bit like the birds that we see in the sky who fly in that v-formation. The one who is at the front of the pyramid is bearing the brunt of the wind and the air and the cold, and those who are behind in the v-formation are following in their wake.
That’s what we ought to do. That is the context in which we are to press forward. The prize for which God has called us heavenward in Christ Jesus is Christ Jesus himself; he is the prize. And so, that’s why we say that that’s what we’re always going to be what we’re all about as a church—making much of Christ because he is the end of the journey, as one hymn puts it, we must press on with Christ in mind.
