Completions Are Better Than Starts

Solomon watched two kinds of people in life…those who start projects and those who finish them. He concludes:

“Better is the end of a thing than its beginning, and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit.” (Ecclesiastes 7:8, ESV)

I have known starters. They love the thrill of a brainstorm with its idea lightning bolts and excited shouts of Eureka. All kinds of ideas flow. The words “We are going to” gush from the mouth.

Three decades ago, a man in Tennessee had a dream to get the gospel into every home in the nation through a direct mail campaign. His salesmen were persuasive, and the church I preached for bought into it. We raised thousands of dollars for the project.

The day came for the mailers to arrive….and it went. No mailers hit neighbors’ mailboxes. It was a great start, and a fizzled finish.

In the end, it was only paper plans.

Others were finishers. You never knew much about their beginning. They conceived of a plan of study and executed it. In fact, finishers seldom get notice because they let their finished projects speak for themselves, not the roaring paper tigers of planning documents or press releases.

Jesus knew the problem as well.

A man ran up to him and said, “I will follow you wherever you go.” He warned him against making rash promises until you know the problems that ensue. Rocks for pillows. Opposition in the face of doing good.

Instead, stop and think about the end before starting.

“For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace.” (Luke 14:28–32, ESV)

Jesus knew people. He knew some impulsively took the plunge into discipleship. Those who take their spiritual lives seriously look for problems so they can finish.

The human landscape is littered with the souls of good intentions that found the spiritual life difficult. It is not the grand start but the strong finish that decides a life.

Paul would say, “I have finished the race.” (2 Timothy 4:7)

So remember the words of Solomon. Completions are better than starts.

In 2017, I made a note in my Apple Notes about starting a podcast. It sat there for 3 years. Nothing happened. Just plans sitting on an electronic shelf, easily ignored.

Yet in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic put a goad in my back. Are you going to do something? After a night of thinking, I turned on my phone camera and started a weekday program called Morning Coffee that continues to this day.

I had good intentions, but only the follow-through counted.

Do you have something like that lingering in your own life? What will you do to bring it to completion?