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"Even when I am old and gray, do not forsake me, O God, till I declare your power to the next generation, your might to all who are to come\u201d (Psalm 71:18).

I read about a Christian leader whose office walls are covered with pictures of those who, as he put it, "have finished strong". He has pictures of Mother Teresa, C.S. Lewis, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Francis Schaeffer.

When I took a course on leadership some years ago, one of the units was on "finishing well." At times I ponder the question, "What does it mean to finish well?"

It is known that Billy Graham once said to his daughter, "All my life, I've been taught how to die, but no one ever taught me how to grow old." One thing I have observed. Growing old is not easy. Psalm 71 gives us a sage testimony that can sustain us along the way.

Interestingly, my first intensive experience with Psalm 71 was as a preaching text for a Cadet Sunday (Cadet\u2019s is a club for boys ages 9-13). I doubt it was the Cadets themselves which choose the text since the Psalm was originally composed by an old person who was probably struggling with some life ending disease. There is a sense that the psalmist was feeling shunted to the side, no longer useful.

How does this poem help us finish well? There is a deep and abiding confidence in God woven into this song. "But as for me, I will always have hope...Though you have made me see troubles, many and bitter; you will restore my life again" (14, 20).

It is not uncommon for Christians to wonder if "their faith will stick". We worry we will backslide, and death will come upon us in a season of doubt or unbelief or ungodliness.

The psalmist has no such fear, and we don't need to live with it either. We put way too much stock in our own abilities or too much doubt in our lack of them. Here, the scripture reminds us that our hope is not in ourselves, but in our God. The God who calls us is the God who will keep us. Whatever life might hold, He will always be there with us.

Finishing well is not dependent on us, but on God fulfilling His promise to be with us to the end. Our salvation is not dependent on our holiness but in the holiness of Jesus Christ. As He, in obedience to His Father, suffered and died for us, our redemption was secured.

But sometimes we doubt all of this. True. Then we need to pray Psalm 71. We join the psalmist in voicing our doubts and our disappointments. As we lay all of them out before the Lord, we discover that our hope increases, and our doubts begin to fade.

As we pray through this psalm, we also find within us a growing desire to witness to the goodness of God. It is in such praying that we remember the greatness of God and we are filled with a need to declare it to the next generation. \xa0