The Woman Who Finished What She Started

In Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, young Jem Finch believes his father Atticus is the bravest man in Maycomb County after watching him drop a rabid dog in the street with a single rifle shot. But Atticus has a different lesson in mind.

He sends Jem to read aloud each afternoon to their cantankerous neighbor, Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose — a woman Jem despises. Only after Mrs. Dubose dies does Atticus reveal the truth: she had been addicted to morphine for years and was determined to break free before she died. Each day Jem read to her, she was enduring longer and longer stretches without the drug, suffering through every minute of withdrawal. She died beholden to nothing and no one.

"I wanted you to see what real courage is," Atticus tells his son. "It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what."

Scripture speaks the same truth. The courage God honors is rarely spectacular. It is the single mother who keeps praying when nothing changes. The recovering addict who walks into one more meeting. The believer who forgives when everything inside screams otherwise. Real courage, the kind the Almighty strengthens, is not the absence of fear — it is faithfulness sustained through suffering. "Be strong and courageous," the Lord told Joshua, not because the battle would be easy, but because He would be present in every step of it.