Excerpt from Hebrews 13:20-21

"Now may the God of peace . . . make you complete in everything good so that you may do God's will . . ."

Reflection by Lillian Daniel

Little children in school are taught the importance of completing their assignments. In college, if you don't write your final paper, you get a grade of "incomplete," which seems to imply that when you finally write that paper, you will be complete.

But then we become grownups, and we discover that most of our important jobs are never complete. We may finish up one aspect of a project at work, but that leads to another one. A student may complete a homework assignment, but the teacher has a job that is never complete. Many of us have jobs that are never complete.

Take parenting. Parents of small children will look at the parents of teenagers and say, "Tell me it gets easier!" But parents of teenagers will tell you that it just gets more complicated. Parents of adult children tell me that the job of parenting is really never done. Kids move out, and then in many cases, they move back in.  But even if they live in their own place, it's not as if our children ever graduate from needing parents.

You don't one day suddenly complete the job of parenting. It continues even after your children have children, and are doing that job themselves, with those same incomplete results.

In life, we don't get a gold star for getting the big jobs done. Rather, I think God gives us a gold star for hanging in there, still working, in the incompleteness of life.

For in the end, people are not complete, until God completes us. One day, we will meet the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. We will see God face to face, and finally be complete.

But until then . . .there's nothing wrong with taking the occasional incomplete.

Prayer

Gracious and patient God, stick close by me in the incompleteness of life's work. Give my efforts purpose and meaning, if not completion.  Amen.

About the Author Lillian Daniel is the senior minister of the First Congregational Church, UCC, Glen Ellyn, Illinois. She is the author, with Martin Copenhaver, of This Odd and Wondrous Calling: the Public and Private Lives of Two Ministers.

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