“Wherever you are, be all there.” This is a quote by Jim Elliot, one of five missionaries killed while participating in Operation Auca, an attempt to bring the good news of Jesus Christ to the Huaorani people of Ecuador. He was a kindred spirit of the Apostle Paul whose life included taking the gospel to unreached lands and peoples, enduring multiple trials and persecutions, and leaving the legacy of a life lived to the “last full measure.”
Taken from passages in Acts and II Timothy, the following is an expansion of some of Paul’s last earth-bound words before being executed in a prison just outside Rome:
“Nothing else matters to me. Nothing else moves me. My life, the very essence of my being, is not something that I cling to as my own possession. What is of utmost importance to me is to complete and fulfill what God started…the race that He has given me to run, the task that I have been given to accomplish, and the ministry given to me by Jesus Christ. I am a witness to and a channel for the extravagant grace and generosity of God. I have run hard right up to the finish. The race is complete. I have guarded and protected and witnessed to the Truth. The time of my departure from this realm is near.”