Unfinished

Looking long and hard at that word can fill us with feelings of failure or it could fill us with the thrill of unseen hope. Failure if we think of unfinished in the sense that what should have been done was not done. This has a way of making us feel guilty about what is unfinished. I've had plenty of that in my life, in fact, I would say I have had enough of that in my life. Or, on the other hand, unfinished has within it something that could fill us with a sense of hope. Hope if we think of it as the journey being unfinished, that there is still more ahead, more mystery, more to do, more to be done, it's just that it is unfinished.
I have been enjoying a book by Brian D Mclaren called the "The secret Message of Jesus". At the end of the book he quotes a poem written by a man martyred in 1980, the Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador.

It helps now and then to step back and take the long view
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
It is beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of
the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.
Nothing we do is complete,
Which is another way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us

No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection…
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about:
We plant seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted,
Knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything
And there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something,
And to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for God’s grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results….
We are prophets of a future no our own.