Beginning a work. Working toward
completion. Completing what one has started. Starting another. In our finite
and temporal perspective of life, everything has a beginning, middle, and end.
The constructor sets out to pave a road from one point to another. After a good
time of labor, he finds himself under the hot sun with fresh tar and gravel
underfoot and his eyes set towards the destination, miles and months away. And
when that happy day comes where the last swath of pavement overlap with the lot
of land that the contract stipulates, the need for a road suddenly is met and
the road builder becomes suddenly obsolete for that project.
Is this not how it should be?
Should the doctor constantly be working on a patient, with no foreseeable
cessation of care other than the inevitable flat line? Either way, the doctor’s
work is done when the patient no longer needs the physicians touch, either
through healing or death. And the author does not continuously pen the same
page if he wants payment at some point. He must finish inking that chapter, so
as to move onto the chapter next. The chapter already penned has no more need
of his eye and quill than the authors last meal needs eating again.
We should all strive to work ourselves out of job, and then
to pick up another.
Like a teacher who learns a child
of reading the alphabet must find a stopping point at which the change to
grammar is necessary or a friend who has helped another in overcoming a fear of
a particular thought or thing must find a new way to better their buddy, we
cannot hold so fast to one specific job that we hold up progress of the person
we aim to help. The constructor of roads must find a new road to pave, else he
hamper traffic on the road just made by the constant laying down of fresh
asphalt where there is none needed. The doctor cannot continue to stitch the
same wound, but must move on to treat the next. The author will die of
starvation if one pages work keeps him from ever getting on to the next. The
parent must, at some point, allow the child to take its own steps without the
hovering hands to hold.
But I never put it to anyone to
finish one task in their life and then to begin to dig their own grave. We have
not been made as single-task robots of an assembly line, relegated to the junk
heap when worn out or when the company begins a new product. We are
multifaceted, multitalented, multientangled creatures that reflect a creator of
infinite creativity and restorative power. To think of ourselves as one-trick
ponies to be turned out to pasture after one showing is to deny a true
reflection of the creator that we strive to imitate. We should not relegate
ourselves to the junk heap or the porch swing, unless we know that a good work
to begin, work through, and complete is to be found in said heap or swing.
Turning from a work finished to a
work unstarted is by no means an easy task. It can be a thing of emotional
drains and a severing of former attachment to the task behind and a transplant
of time, energy, and heart to the new pavement, parchment, patient, protégé, or
pupil. But we must do it. This world is for the working of good and the
thwarting of evil, not for the resting of barely used bones. Our true rest is
reserved for when the work that our Creator finally finishes in us. When we are
finally allowed the porch swing of perfect restoration to the relationship we
were meant for when life is simply a sweaty and tear stained memory. Then we
will hear “Well DONE. My good and
faithful worker.”
Beginning a work. Working toward
completion. Completing what one has started. Starting another now.
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