To Finish, or not to Finish? - Ruth L. Snyder

This month we are being asked to share whether we struggle with unfinished projects, and how we stay on task until projects are completed.

I am a finisher. In fact, not finishing something can make me very frustrated. Just before I started writing this post I was able to finish solving a problem on the InScribe website. After InScribe members elected the new executive at Fall Conference 2016, the names and contact information needed to be updated on the website. Most of the changes were easy to make. However, the InScribe website has a bottom banner or footer, that is on every page of the website. Information in this area needed to be updated. Every time I looked at the website, that out of date information irked me. (If you're not interested in things technical, you may want to skip the following description.) I knew from past experience that I needed to find the widget. However, when I brought up the widget page, the one I needed wasn't there. I asked our previous webmaster, other people familiar with Wordpress, and even our web host technical support. No one could figure it out. This morning I cried out to the Lord (for what seemed like the hundredth time) and asked Him to show me the solution. Then I went back to the website and updated a plugin. I noticed when I clicked on certain menu options that an error message popped up, pointing to one of our plugins. I disabled the plugin, and the widget I needed "magically" appeared. The changes took a matter of minutes to make. Solving problems and finishing things make me happy. I'm one of those list makers!

 

I may be a finisher at heart, but then many times life happens. One of the biggest adjustments I had as a parent was accepting the reality that I would rarely be able to work on projects to completion, especially at one sitting. I have learned to delay projects that take focus and concentration to times of the day when my children and husband are not around me. I don't want them to feel like interruptions. I have also chosen to focus on shorter writing projects for now, instead of books. Even then, my writing projects often take me way longer to complete than I would like. I have also requested an office space with a door I can close while I'm writing. Some day that will be a reality.

Ecclesiastes 3:1 says, "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven" (KJV). I am often reminded that God's timing is different than mine. Instead of focusing on completing a project, I am learning to focus on the process and enjoy the ride. (My husband has helped me in this area, but not without loud protests on my part at times! Generally I am the planner, and he is the spontaneous one.)

I do have another unfinished project hiding in my desk - a novel that is about two-thirds completed. In the middle of working on the novel with an editor guiding me, God told me to put it away. Some day I'm trusting that the season will be right to finish the novel, but for now I know that I can trust God with it.

What about you? Do you have unfinished projects? Do unfinished projects bother you? What do you do to stay on track and finish?

Ruth L. Snyder serves God as a wife, mother, music teacher, writer, coach, and publisher. Her published works include articles, devotionals, short stories, and novellas. Connect with Ruth at http://ruthlsnyder.com

Unfinished Projects - Sheila Webster

Ephesians 2:10 - For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.

About 2006 or 2007 I started to write a manuscript about my simple view of spirituality in a book format.  However, one of those life tsunamis took place and much of my writing and life became jetsam on scattered shores of memory.  Never the same again and I didn’t know what happened to that manuscript along with much of my other writing.

In 2011, while visiting my former childhood pastor, several provinces away, he asked me if I had ever published the manuscript.  I was stunned as I had forgotten about it and became ashamed in a way that it was another broken thread of life.

He laughed at me, which seemed like an entirely inappropriate response for what I was feeling.  Upon going to his office he returned with my unfinished manuscript in hand!

“You emailed it to me for my comments on whether it was doctrinally accurate and not condemning of people or situations! “  He seemed to think this should have been obvious to me.

I didn’t know what to do, except that if God had preserved this piece while hundreds had been lost, I must finish it.

Finishing the last few pages was monumental because I was now a different person, No longer the same name or family structure.  God gave me the grace, the faltering words and the funds to complete it.  A Simple Spirituality was published within the next eighteen months.  Many people have told me how my simple faith and perseverance through difficult situations described in the book have encouraged them to return to faith or increased their faith and forgiveness in situations.

Another unfinished project resurrected itself this year.  I was having what I thought was a simple conversation with a friend about something.  It reminded me of something I had written almost two decades ago that also had been lost during that difficult time.

My friend was so intrigued by the story she asked a literary periodical if they would be interested in it!  She then nonchalantly told me they wanted it and to hurry and rewrite it for them.  I had never considered it, as it was a difficult piece.

Rewrite it I did, even though it came out from a different character’s perspective and with different details but a similar ending which was the most salient part.

I have heard several sermons lately about our calling being without repentance – as Christians those good works prepared beforehand by God, in Christ, through the help of the Holy Spirit.

What pieces do you need to dust off, resurrect, pray over or write?  For all of us the process can be challenging but comes down to a number of simple spiritual and practical disciplines.

1.     Pray

2.     Put your hand to the work.

3.     Persevere

4.     Edit

5.     Publish

In the end, whether on earth or later we will hear the words – “well done good and faithful servant.”

Resetting Our Spiritual Time Clocks by Sharon Espeseth

Don't forget to reset your clocks tonight!

A Mini-History of Lent

On March 1, we observed Ash Wednesday, an important day on the Christian liturgical calendar, which officially begins the season of Lent. In brief, Lent is a time to repent of our sins, renew our faith, and prepare for Easter when we see Jesus risen from the grave.

Researching the etymology of the word Lent, we find that Lent in many languages implies "forty" which signifies the number of days Jesus spent in the wilderness with God the Father. When the six days of Easter week are added to the forty, the season of Lent becomes 46 days.


Historian and priest, Norman Tanner SJ, in his article "A Short History of Lent," points out that the English word Lent comes from the Anglo-Saxon word meaning "lengthen." Norman Tanner explains that Lent is ". . . a time when we can stretch out and grow in the Spirit."



To read more of Norman Tanner's explanation about the joy of Lent, see
www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/20110315_1.htm.

At this site, we read Tanner's explanation of how God's grace can work in us, if we but cooperate with God in the process of growing our faith. God cannot grow our faith without us.

Lent is here. What does that mean to each of us? 

In Isaiah: 58:1-9a, God tells us that he doesn't want us to wear sack cloth and sit in ashes.That's not the kind of fasting he wants to see. Rather he would have us be active in making ours a better world by loosing the chains of injustice, untying the cords that bind people, setting the oppressed free,  by helping to provide food and shelter for the needy. . .

This we can do by loving God and loving our neighbour as ourselves, by doing charitable deeds, and by spending time in God's presence. Saint Teresa of Calcutta has said, "We need to find God, and God cannot be found in noise and restlessness. The more we receive in silent prayer, the more we can give in our active life."

Finding Our Own Wilderness

Without going to the wilderness for forty days as Christ did, we can retreat to the quiet of our bedrooms to pray. We can turn off the television and other technical devices to read God's Word and spend time in prayer. We can put on sacred music or listen to tapes of Scripture or faith messages while we drive, go for a walk, or do household chores.

Resetting Our Spiritual Clocks

"Lent comes providentially," Pope Francis says, "to reawaken us from our lethargy."

For those of us living in a province where the time changes in spring or fall, this is the weekend for resetting our clocks. We can be creative and individual in how we reset our spiritual clocks.

Lent may be the best of times to "breathe new life," as Sandi Somers says in her blog, into one or more of our unfinished writing projects. Our writing, if surrendered to God, may bring a life-changing message to one, or more, of our readers. Whatever our genre--essay, fiction, memoir, blog or poetry--someone in this world may be waiting for what God leads us to write.

Listening

Remember the movie, "O God" with actor John Denver. Although this movie was "theology lite," the writer of the story made a good theological point. A fictitious God, acted by George Burns, gave a  non-religious, young, assistant manager of a supermarket the message that the world can work with what he, God, has already given us.

St. Augustine is credited with saying, "God has promised forgiveness to your repentance, but he has

not promised tomorrow to your procrastination."



Whatever your message, remember the Chinese pro
verb that says, "The best time to plant a tree (or write a book) was twenty years ago. The second best time is now."




* Clock photo from Pixabay.

Procrastination - Shirley S. Tye

According to an article in Psychology Today magazine, 20% of people chronically procrastinate. I entered that group two or three years ago.  Difficult duties, jobs that seem just too big, or tasks that fail to grab my interest, are always put off to a more suitable time.  Of course a more suitable time never materializes unless a deadline looms. And since there is no deadline to complete the novel I’ve been working on for …I don’t know how long...there it sits on the bookshelf collecting dust. 

Why do people procrastinate? Apparently it is linked with motivation.  And what motives a person?  The value or the importance of the work will motivate a person.  Bingo!  Well, there we have it, folks!  I just don’t find my novel important enough to finish. Mind you, if someone offered enough money to get it to the publishing phase, I’d be hitting the keyboard swiftly.  But alas!  No one will offer cash to an unknown writer to complete a novel that may or may not become a hot seller. So then…how shall I motivate myself?  

Sometimes I daydream about my novel.  I dream that it is published and many copies have sold.  It’s a hot seller locally because the story takes place in a near-by ghost town.  In the story, the town is a thriving little community in the present time where a touching love story unfolds and characters come to life.  Readers connect and relate to the characters and this in turn stirs their interest in the ghost town.  They form a strong lobby causing the Canadian government to take more seriously the plight of the village remnants, the neglected pioneer cemeteries, and the lumber history of the area. Soon the village and cemeteries are tidied up, plaques are placed to indicate where some of the buildings had stood, a few benches are placed under the trees facing the lake, a gazebo is erected on the beach, a replica of the general store is constructed, and the abandoned restaurant is re-opened.  Oh, what a lovely dream! Isn’t that enough to motivate me? 

Yes, it’s just a dream but it could come true – or at least, part of it.  Well now, I guess the only thing to do is to pull myself up by the bootstraps.