I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 3:14 (NIV)
The Prize of the Call
The Philippians are told to watch how certain people live and to copy them, because plenty of others around them are living as enemies of the cross. The man telling them this says he hasn’t arrived. He presses on toward the goal to win the prize, straining forward, forgetting what is behind, and he’s plain with them that he hasn’t taken hold of it.
The hot water in a six-story walk-up has been off since Thursday. The super died in June and the job went to his nephew, who is twenty-six, and the basement apartment comes with the job. This is his second week. He has the keys, a clipboard, and the number of a management company that would rather send its own man.
He gets the motor room open and stands in it asking questions. Which of these is the circulation pump, and whose hand lettered the breaker panel. Whether the expansion tank is supposed to sound like that at all. The woman from six came down with him and put her hand on the shutoff without looking for it, and she tells him where it goes, and then she tells him what his uncle always did first.
He resets two breakers, because resetting things worked in the basement he grew up in, and the pumps come up. Then they drop out again. Somebody on the second landing says the management company’s number where he can hear it, and says nothing after that.
Only let us live up to what we have already attained, Paul says next, a smaller thing than the goal and a nearer one. The prize at the end of it belongs to a call God made, heavenward, in Christ Jesus. He strains forward and he forgets what is behind him, and God did the calling.
The clipboard has his uncle’s handwriting on the second page, a list of what goes wrong in this building in the order it goes wrong, and he’s at the fourth item. The woman from six goes back up with the rail under her hand the whole way. He stays in the motor room with the panel open and a third breaker he hasn’t tried.
A Prayer to Remember
Lord God, you called him, and he pressed on toward it without having taken hold of it. Give me legs for the ugly stretch, the year where the ground doesn’t move. When I’m too tired to strain forward, keep calling. You called me heavenward, in Christ Jesus.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
