Incomplete Work

Sometimes I can feel like I am a half-completed cross-stitch.

Philippians 1:1-30

Reference:  v.6  …being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. (NIV Bible)

Explore:  There are a number of personal items that I would like to keep but don’t need access to all the time.  So I’ve piled them all into a couple of boxes that I call my ‘Memory Boxes’.  Within these boxes there are historical goodies like my old school blazer, the first love letter I ever received, the basket I held when I was flower girl, my favourite doll that I named Vicki…  As time had gone along I had just thrown items into the boxes and so all the memories were jumbled up. The other day I finally decided to go through them so that the items were sorted chronologically.  I was amazed at how much stuff I had accumulated in only three decades.  But as I was sorting out all of my items I found a bag with an incomplete cross-stitch in it.  I had learned how to cross-stitch when I was a child and although it was a rather daggy thing to do, I quite enjoyed it.  The cross-stitch I had found in my memory box was one I had started quite a few years ago but was quite complex and so had not been completed.  I took it out of the box and decided that I would try to keep going with it over the Christmas season.  I don’t like leaving things incomplete, and the design was rather cute, and so I have set myself to continue where I had previously left off.

Application:  Sometimes I can feel like I am a half-completed cross-stitch.  I have started maturing and growing in my faith but I’m still many stitches away from being completed.  There is still much work that God can do in me.  And there are times that I wonder whether He has left me to my own devices.  I can wonder whether He has anything planned for me around the corner.  Is there more that He has in store for me?  And then I hear this verse in Philippians ‘…he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion…’  God is not like me with my cross-stitch, He does not leave work incomplete.  Everyday He is adding an extra couple of stitches to our design.  It may not be obvious, but after a certain period of time, when we look back, we can see the beautiful design He has created.  In our faith we are ‘confident of this’, that God is still at work on us.  He doesn’t put us away in a memory box and forget about us for years.  He is always at work in us.

Prayer:  Lord, sometimes I feel distant from You and wonder whether I am on my own.  May I have the faith that is needed to understand that You are always at work in our lives.  Amen.

How is Your life’s design going at the moment?  What part of you is God working on?

Philippians