Finishing Well

And here is my advice about what is best for you in this matter: Last year you were the first not only to give but also to have the desire to do so. Now finish the work, so that your eager willingness to do it may be matched by your completion of it, according to your means. For if the willingness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what he does not have.
2 Corinthians 8:10 – 12

This passage in 2 Corinthians 8:10 – 12 directly addresses the giving of the saints in Corinth for the provision of the saints in Jerusalem. This is one of two related passages presented to the congregation I attend on Consecration Sunday (October 4).

A comment my husband made while making lunch afterward was what caught my attention, though. It’s also what motivates today’s devotional.

Neal’s remark was that we need to make sure to finish our tasks as eagerly as we start them. Ouch!

Verse 11 says, “Now finish the work, so that your eager willingness to do it may be matched by your completion of it, according to your means.”

The Corinthians had begun their collection with great enthusiasm a year earlier, but life had gotten in the way and the collection was still incomplete at the time of Paul’s letter. Paul urged them in his second letter to finish the collection in such a manner that “…your eager willingness to do it may be matched by your completion of it…”.

In other words, finish with the same eagerness and joy with which you began.

That applies not only to taking collections or tithing. It applies to all of life! Every single part of it.

My toes are quite heavily stepped on by this passage because I love to start things, but have a difficult time getting them finished. Especially creative things.

Portraits do get finished, but quite often the enthusiasm with which I begin the work is replaced by disappointment  and discouragement in the middle (this isn’t going the way I hoped, I should start over). That’s often subsequently replaced by a strong desire to just finish and be done with it by the end of the process.

Paintings for myself always begin with a rush of enthusiasm that dwindles to a trickle by mid process (or sooner some times). Many paintings are never finished. In fact, I’m in the process of reprepping a panel on a discarded painting as I write this devotional.

I have over 100 story ideas that came into being with gladness and joy, but that have never been finished. Some have never gotten past the notation of the idea.

Granted, a lot of Great Ideas will never come to fruition because they are not mine to finish. Even King David was given ideas that he was not meant to finish (the first temple).

But what of those ideas that I am given that are mine to finish?

And what of those that lie idle and forgotten?

I can’t even claim any great deeds in finishing those I finish with drudgery and a relief that ‘it’s finally finished’.

What I’m called to do as a Christian is to finish with the same joy and enthusiasm with which I begin.

Actually, the true call is to live joyously and be thankful in all things, the difficult as well as the easy.