Unfinished Projects

This morning I was pondering things that would eventually become the title to this piece.
I was thinking of how much we strive in our doing and working and how despite our best efforts when our lives on this earth begin to run down and health and abilities wane…
What then?
Looking around I noticed mowers that have become a passion for me in a later stage of life.
A passion for repairing and restoring I was not ever really fully aware of.
And I began to reflect on all aspects of how that passion had begun to manifest itself.
Currently there is a young man living with us that had been in a bad situation and needed some help, we have grown to love him greatly but he does present many challenges and life changes for my wife and i.
Yet we are grateful to God for the abundance of grace and provision he provides in this endeavor. And we know that it is His work not ours being undertaken and that we are blessed and privileged to partake in.
This young man is not the first sent to us…in fact he is the fifth out of what we had considered to be four prior failures.
In retrospect we realized that those were in fact “failures on our part to some degree” but works still in progress and the next stage was not necessarily ours to live or experience.
Even when we have no alternative other than to put someone out, Jesus does not abandon and will finish what was started.
Now we both find our passions to do “the work” at a peak while our physical abilities to carry that work out ebbs due to health reasons.
Despite the limitations physically we also find that there has been some kind of honing preparing occurring within us…we can do less but the little we are able to do is tempered by wisdom gained, experience, compassion, grace…thereby the “little” is somehow enhanced and made to be more effective and it goes without saying…”more than sufficient”.
We never saw any of these guys coming, rather blind-sided by them but at the same time it was as if the holy spirit were whispering “this one” every time.
The reaction usually was “huh? No uh-uh…look at I’m he’s a mess I’ll just give I’m a few bucks or something to eat and be done”. Such was the case many a time but in other cases no such chance of simply walking away.
So we just had to finally admit to ourselves that this somehow was God’s Will, if one tries to interpret or understand then one misses the opportunity to obey in faith.
“It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the Living God” indeed!
So you start asking yourself o.k. what next and before you can answer that you find that you’re not so much looking over your shoulder constantly for a watchful overbearing deity constantly checking on progress but become so involved in doing the work in a heartfelt and enthusiastic way, you almost forget the acute awareness/weight of He that is sitting right on your shoulders, not over-bearing in the least but instead patient and fore-bearing. And you realize that it is not arduous at all...but more refreshing/restorative than anything else.
It is akin to learning how to ride a bike...and actually the parent/mentor who was running behind you holding you steady had let go and suddenly you advanced and mastered a new skill very subtly.
There is a peace, a calm that accompanies His work, His yoke is indeed light as He described, it is amazing!
We have no children of our own and can only imagine what it feels like to know that your child has made great strides and achievements and how proud a parent must feel to know that they have instilled the right values.
What is the “measure”, not ours to know…but His.
My dear friend Doug and his wife Hilary exude this kind of parent’s pride over their children and we get to participate in some small measure as observers but take no real measure of it, when God is involved His ways are immeasurable and in their case we believe we can safely say “He is very involved”.
David is the young man’s name who currently resides with us, I believe those before him were tests and fine tuning and that it all led to preparing us for David in a kind of training period.
I have heard through other workmates of his that he often slips and refers to me as “Dad”.
Immediately I think “Dad, are you out of your mind!” but a little smile usually creeps in that belies a warmth and comfort derived from hearing it…if I had ever had a son I would be very humbly honored to have one like David (I begin to think I could get used to this…?).
All of these young men were God-sends…this feels more like a God “stay” right nowJ
Whatever the duration and regardless of how God moves in this, we can be nothing but grateful.
And it makes me wonder…gives me tremendous p-a-u-s-e to just stop everything and reflect, meditate upon the true definition of a so called “Unfinished Project”? Somehow the understanding I thought I knew is totally flawed, this I know but I have no answers beyond that to offer. Need to know basis I guess...we have come to the conclusion after a very, very long road that we do not need to know, just hear and "do". That for us (and mind you we are only speaking for ourselves here...) is growing more and more to become the definition of True freedom in the ability to "let go" especially...learning when to.
Just watch the wheels turning autonomously now...disappearing off into the sunset's horizon...as my friend Doug would say: "atta' boy"!