Finishing His Work

I have this dream that won't go away. I have been having this dream over and over for years. I had this dream again last night. I am in college and I cannot graduate. I am always a course or two from graduating, and it is late in the semester and I have not been attending some of my required classes. I am destined to fail a class or two and therefore I cannot graduate. Sometimes the dream involves me coming to the end of the semester and realizing I did not take all the courses I needed to get my diploma. I have a term paper due immediately and I haven't started....or I missed some test days....I just can't get finished!

My dream is typical of life's experience on this soil. There is always another day of work, a new deadline, a different task or goal that must be addressed. If we have the perfect garden, new weeds will invade it. No matter how great our work situation is, problems that must be fixed will arise. Bills must be paid, mouths must be fed, and above all of this, people are lost without the gospel and they need the Lord. Sometimes it seems like we are just treading water.

It gives me great consolation to know that our Savior also felt this way. When one man came and pledged discipleship, Christ responded, "Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head" (Matt. 8:20). To the twelve Jesus once said, "I must work the works of Him while it is day, the night is coming when no one can work" (John 9:4). Jesus even reminded the Jews, "My Father has been working until now, and I have been working" (John 5:17). Jesus came to the earth with the intention of finishing. He told the apostles, "My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work" (John 4:34).

Whenever I feel defeated and I just don't think I can go another step, I see Jesus. I see Him in that last recorded prayer to the Father before His crucifixion. I recall these words from that prayer, "I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do" (John 17:4). Somewhere between His birth and His death, Jesus finished the work God sent Him to do. John's gospel tells us the last words of Jesus on the cross before he bowed His head and died were simply, "It is finished!" (John 19:30).

Jesus finished. In the history of humanity, the Man who had the most difficult job of all - finished! I believe that no matter how difficult the task, and no matter how discouraging the process, if we are determined to keep on going, we will finish. We cannot stop in the middle. We must endure to the end. If we do not finish all is lost. And so I have decided to finish. The challenge of the work and the duration of the work have become immaterial. It is only a matter of time...

"...let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." ~ Hebrews 12:1a-2.