Often called the best ex-president in history, Jimmy Carter turned ninety-nine on October 1.  His run has been amazing.  After nearly eight months in hospice care, Carter keeps going, focusing on enjoying whatever time he has left on the planet.  One wonders whether he'll reach one hundred.

    Carter's list of post-presidential accomplishments is lengthy.  He has won the Nobel Peace Prize.  He established the Carter Center, an organization devoted to alleviating disease and promoting peace across the world.  He devoted many years to volunteering in Habitat for Humanity, which seeks to build houses for the poor and disadvantaged throughout the globe.  And much more.  His is an enviable life, not because he has been a naval officer, successful business person, and president of the United States, but because he has consistently viewed his privileges not as occasions for self-congratulations and personal aggrandizement, but as opportunities to effect untold measures of good and goodness around the world.  Carter is a picture of living service to humanity.

    A life long Christian, Carter firmly believes that upon death he will see the God "whom," as he says, "I worship."  It's difficult to dispute the central role that Carter's faith has played in his life.  Everything he has done, he has stated, he has done because, put simply, this is "my calling as a Christian."

    About eight years, while attending a conference at the Carter Center, I was delighted to meet Jimmy Carter.  He did not disappoint.  As he appears to be, he is:  a human being profoundly committed to the improvement of the lives of other human beings.

    Yes, as president, Carter made some mistakes.  Don't we all?  Happily, however, God is much bigger than our mistakes.  Moreover, he is not as interested in how we start as he is how we end.

    We should all end as well as Jimmy Carter.