The Reach To Finish

“But now finish doing it also, so that just as there was the readiness to desire it, so there may be also the completion of it by your ability.” II Corinthians 8:11

Have any projects laying around half finished? Come on now. Have you? I think most of us do, whether it be a manuscript for the great American novel, an enterprise to be finished in the garage, photograph albums to be arranged, or a partially knitted afghan. Perhaps it is an idea for church growth that merely needs to be fleshed-out so that its energy and life may be released, or perhaps it is an idea for a visionary series of lectures. Could it be a song…although you have never written music…but somehow you hear the music in your soul?

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Honor Books tells of physician A. J. Cronin who having practiced for ten years developed a gastric ulcer, and consequently required complete rest. He went to a farm on the Scotland Highlands. Cronin writes, “The first few days of leisure were pleasant enough, but soon the enforced idleness of Fyne Farm became insufferable…I had often at the back of my mind, nursed the vague illusion that I might write. I had actually thought out the theme of a novel–the tragic record of man’s egotism and bitter pride…”

“Upstairs in my cold, clean bedroom was a scrubbed deal table and a very hard chair. Next morning I found myself in this chair, facing a new exercise book open upon the table, slowly becoming aware that, short of dog-Latin prescriptions, I had never composed a significant phrase in my life. It was a discouraging thought as I picked up my pen. Never mind, I began.”

According to Honor Books, even though Cronin struggled to write 500 words a day and eventually threw his first draft on the farm’s trash heap, he finished Hatter’s Castle. The book was dramatized, translated into 200 languages, and sold some five million copies. The world had lost a physician, but gained a novelist.

There may be some reading here today who have toyed with an illusion of doing something grand, something seemingly beyond your reach, something that will enrich the church and the work of God. Do it! Do it now…today. Reach for the pen, or make the phone call, or travel the distance. You CAN do it.

Finish doing it, Paul spoke to the church at Corinth. You’ve thought about it, you want it, now go for it!

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