Finish What You Started!
Any project, whether great or small, will seldom succeed if its progress is interrupted in favor of lesser things.
Just imagine an architect paying more attention to certain activities of mere personal interest, which in no way advance the completion of a structure! Think of a laborer in any job, who misses work repeatedly; all tasks will remain incomplete and other persons will be adversely affected. One may even lose that employment.
The success of any enterprise is always linked to the wholeheartedness with which it is carried forth by the one doing it. Sloth in business will not yield the results that are possible to it, and anticipated from it.
A farmer devotes countless hours, and gives total attention to ploughing the fields, sowing the seeds, watering the ground, so as to anticipate a rich harvest.
The labors will go on night and day on behalf of raising animals. Just consider the cows: they need to be milked at regular intervals; they don’t stay milked!
Tasks requiring human intervention cannot proceed alone, without the ingenuity and full involvement of a woman or a man fulfilling them. In spite of so much automation in the world, humans are still necessary to program instruments, to operate machinery, to observe and control the rythms of certain technologies, as well as interrupt their flow, and stop them completely when necessary.
Whether in slowness or swiftness, all tasks require consistency and continuity if they are to be completed. And only when a work is finished will it benefit those for whom it is intended.
The integrity of any enterprise allows no short-cuts, and has no tolerance for imitations, nor counterfeit productions! The glory of any job is its completion! God is not the foreman of any unfinished business. He Himself offers a model of faithfulness and total devotion to all His activity.
He concluded the creation of the universe in six days, but ever since He continues to superintend the universe He shaped. Jesus reported: “My father has been working until now, and I have been working” (John 5:17). Jesus further exemplified the same about Himself, when He stated: “I must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day; the night is coming when no one can work” (John 9:4). In His High Priestly prayer, the Savior addressed His Father: “I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which you have given Me to do” (John 17:4).
What Jesus recognized we also must, that all human toil is an act of worship, either to the true and living God, or to an idol of some sort. We need to acknowledge that, and conduct each of our best efforts as a doxology unto Him “in whom we live and move and have our being”!
In the words of Lutheran pastor, James R. Bjorge, “let us seek not just to do great things, but to do small things in a great way,” remembering also that “God usually takes over after we have done our best” as Dr. Charles L. Allen reassures us.
