Oh those days of feeling I’ve left too many to-do’s unfinished. Ever had those days? I had about 10 years’ worth in a row when my five children were little. I would get to the end of a day and think: Wait. Did I actually get anything done? Anything finished? Anything?
Maybe it wasn’t so much that I hadn’t accomplished anything. Just not many/any of the genuine to-do’s on the list. When you have a bunch of babies in a short span of time, there are ever the little surprises in a day. Like while you’re trying to fish Milk Duds out of the toaster (the Milk Duds that didn’t toast nearly as awesomely as your kids imagined) and your oldest comes to tell you the toddler is covering the cat with pudding. Oh, and one of the other kids just threw up. In the toy box.
Those were the years of much unfinished business—and a cycle of new toasters and toy boxes. I could tell loads of those stories without even resorting to the laundry tales. But ya’ll know that laundry was ever unfinished, right? I could tell stories. Loads and loads of them.
Now that the kids are grown, I’m in a new season. And I have to tell you, at the end of a day, there’s often still a lot left hanging. And it’s not laundry. Goodness knows, there’s still plenty of laundry. Loads for every season of life. Mostly unfinished.
I’ve made some discoveries through all the seasons of unfinished business. I’ve discovered I fret the most about what I’m not accomplishing when I’m struggling to accomplish it in my own strength. That’s when I end up focusing on all the wrong accomplishments anyway.
There’s a sort of recalibration of the focus and a completely different outlook on those worries over what I haven’t yet done when I realize that everything truly vital in this life—everything really worth finishing—has already been accomplished by the “Author and Finisher” of our faith. At each point I surrender and let the Finisher do the finishing, let the Completer do the completing, I can stop the sweating and experience His peace. “Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you complete in every good work to do His will, working in you what is well pleasing in His sight, though Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen” (Hebrews 13:20-21, NKJV).
He is the Completer of every good work—and He does that finishing work “in” us. He is faithful to finish the works that really count—as faithful as He is to accomplish the saving work in us. When the Father completed His redemptive plan through the sacrificial death of His Son on the cross, the most glorious words of all time reverberated across eternity: “It is finished.”
Resting in His finished work gives us an entirely different take on each season’s toybox and toaster interruptions. It moves the “finish line” to a reachable spot—one He will reach for us and in us in the most glorious way.
We can finish up, friends. Not “finish up.” But, eyes toward heaven, finish UP.