| December 21, 2005
White Space
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For nearly 50 years, Ann Landers dispensed advice in a daily column carried by more than 1,200 newspapers worldwide. When she died on June 22, 2002, her daughter Margo Howard wrote a farewell column. She asked the editors to leave a blank space for the last part of the column as a memorial to her mom.
The idea came from a column written years earlier when Ann and her husband divorced after a long marriage. Ann had requested the editors to leave white space at the bottom as a memorial to a once-good marriage "that didn't make it to the finish line."
When somebody writes your last column, how much "blank space" will it include? When you come to life's end, will there be important things left undone? Will that white space bear silent testimony to goals you never reached, good habits (like consistent Bible reading) you never formed, help you never gave, kind things you thought about doing but never did? Will a sizeable empty space say that you intended to develop a deeper relationship with God, but that a close intimacy remained an unfulfilled ideal? Or will others be able to say of you that you "finished the race, [and] kept the faith"? (2 Timothy 4:7).
Let's make sure our white space is small! —Vernon Grounds
Only the seed that on earth we have sown;
These shall pass onward when we are forgotten,
Fruits of the harvest and what we have done. —Bonar
To get the most out of life, make every moment count for Christ.
Finishing Well