Just Finish IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Have you ever wanted to finish something you started, just because you started it? Years ago, my ex wife, who is very creative started a beautiful white ornate "Christmas Tree Skirt". It was very large, very detailed, and would take up lots of time. I ask her if she was going to have in finished by this next Christmas. She just rolled her eyes, and said: "Not THIS Christmas". It became a kinda joke for us over the next few years, I think I enjoyed it more then she did, looking back, though. I would ask her around Thanksgiving if the Christmas Tree Skirt would be making an appearance this year. Mary, always being busy, especially around the Christmas season, would say something like: "Don't get your hopes up." It's not that she didn't want to finish the skirt, it's just that it took so much time, and it was a style of knitting she had not done before. She was fantastic at "cross stitching" "Knitting" and some others I don't know the proper name for, but this was something that she was learning as she went along. Mary is one of most "crafty" (I mean that in a Craft way, not a bad way:)) people I have ever known, along with her Mom. I saw her do things that amazed me, I never saw her NOT be able to do anything like this. So, I kinda pointed out each year about the "Skirt" she had failed to finish, and I am sure I made her a little mad.

I have started writing a book, about 25 times. Right now I have a book "in the works", I have written the whole first chapter, of course the "chapter" is only 3 pages long> I find it easier to give up when I run out of ideas of what to do next. It just seems easier. This latest book I've started, I have vowed to finish, no matter how long it takes. Yeah I have told myself that before, too. Just once I would like to finish, say, 100 pages. I figure, if I can make it to 100 pages, then I would have a pretty good idea what was happening and will happen in my book. I would have the main characters story down by then, I would have a plot pretty much established. It's those first hundred pages that are the hardest, once you get to page 101, the rest will just flow, right?


Finishing something you started, it's a problem for many of us. My dad has a neighbor, who has a half finished deck, a slab he laid for a non-existing above ground pool, a old jeep in the back yard that he is going to restore, "someday" and several other half, or not even started projects. Does any of this ring a bell?

Paul talks allot about "running the Race", "hitting the mark", "not quitting, until we have reached our goal". Philippians 3:14
"I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us."

Are you in it to win it? Or, like all of us at times, just strolling along, and watching the weeds grow.

Years ago, after my hitch in the Navy, I was in the Navy Reserves for awhile. One of the things you have to do in the "Reserves" is pass a Physical Test, for your age group, every year. You know, do so many pushups, so many pullups, and walk a preset length in a certain time. I "drilled" each month in New Orleans, they would fly us down there for the weekend. Our C.O. (That is Commanding Officer, in case you did not know), was about 47 maybe 50. My age now! He worried about this PT every year. He would lay out the course we were to run using his car. He would make sure there were no hills, of any kind. He would make sure we would have to run mostly toward the ocean/bay, so that we could feel the breeze on our faces to keep us cooler. In the Navy, at least at that time, the times we had to finish this run were very easy. (Sailors, after all, don't have to do much in the way of hauling 50 pound packs through the forest or run from the enemy as they are firing at you, we just sat on a ship hundreds of miles away and launch missiles and planes at the enemy.) So, on the day of the test, unless you were in the 20-25 age range, you could walk the entire course and do fine. You would have to walk at a fairly fast pace, but no problem. Our CO would always be: "Taking up the Rear" to "Make sure everyone was in front of him ,and thereby passed." We all knew this test worried him, he was getting older, and in the civilian world a lawyer,who did not get much exercise. But he was a fantastic man, we all respected and loved having hun as our CO. But, we all finished the race and passed for another year.



2 Timothy 4:7
I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, and I have remained faithful.
I think Paul in this scripture, has hit the nail on the head, "............finished the race, and I have remained faithful." We all want to finish the tasks we have started, but sometimes life just gets in the way, or we just don't have that drive we had when we started, or we found out it was a LOT harder then what we thought it was going to be. Making it through "Boot Camp" was one of those for me. I finished, I accomplished something. Looking back it wasn't that hard of ordeal, but at the time it gave me the satisfaction of completing something hard.
My first "West-Pac" or Western Pacific cruise while on the USS Kitty Hawk CV-63, a Aircraft Carrier out of San Diego, was the longest time I had ever been away from home, let alone the first time I had ever been out of the country. We were "extended" from a 6 month cruise to a 9 month cruise thanks to the "Shaw of Iran" and the hostage situation. But when we arrived back in San Diego, I felt "Salty" a real Sailor, I had finished my first extended cruise, I had been halfway around the world and back. I had been across the Equator I was a "Shell Back". Look that up on the internet, sometime, don't really want to go into it here, you "Pollywogs"

OK, lets talk about finishing something we started, like our Christian Lives. I ask Jesus Christ into my life when I was 5 years old. That was almost 50 years ago. If you good a math, you now know how old I will be in February. I have left the path, stopped running the race, lost much ground, gave up, fallen down, decided it wasn't worth it, started thinking the race was all about me, left the course because I saw a new and "better" race being run " over there", for many of those years. I have known the Lord Jesus Christ for almost 50 years, I should be a Saint. But I am nowhere near that. Why? Because, many times in my life, I have decided not to finish this race.

But there is good news: You can reenter the race at any point. Just talk to the Race Judge, and ask Him if it is alright if you start running again. You will have to tell Him your sorry for dropping out, and doing stupid stuff, but He has NEVER denied anyone from continuing. The race has gone on while you were off doing whatever you were doing, so you will have to start where you left off, or maybe even further back. But it's OK, there are runners at every part of course. There will be others at the same point on the track where you pick up the pace, and they will help you and you will help them. You see one of the reasons to run this race is to finally, maybe for the first time in your life, finish something. And it is not about finishing 1st or even 100,000th, it is about finishing. We are NOT racing against each other, but pushing ourselves, with His help, to finish. To complete this task. To enjoy our Reward.

We have NO idea what is waiting at the end of this race, we have our own pictures in our minds, but NOTHING we, as humans, can compare to what is waiting for us at the finish line.

In the end we will be able to say as Paul did: Philippians 2:16
Hold firmly to the word of life; then, on the day of Christ’s return, I will be proud that I did not run the race in vain and that my work was not useless.