Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

So all the work on the tabernacle, the tent of meeting, was completed. The Israelites did everything just as the Lord commanded Moses.

• Exodus 39:32

When Israel became strong, they pressed the Canaanites into forced labor but never drove them out completely.

• Judges 1:28

The land enjoyed its sabbath rests; all the time of its desolation it rested, until the seventy years were completed in fulfillment of the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah.

• 2 Chronicles 36:21

Their entire bodies, including their backs, their hands and their wings, were completely full of eyes, as were their four wheels.

• Ezekiel 10:12

The Lord Almighty declares, ‘I will send it out, and it will enter the house of the thief and the house of anyone who swears falsely by my name. It will remain in that house and destroy it completely, both its timbers and its stones.’”

• Zechariah 5:4

Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” So he stretched it out and it was completely restored, just as sound as the other.

• Matthew 12:13

They came to Bethsaida, and some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him. He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had spit on the man’s eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, “Do you see anything?”
He looked up and said, “I see people; they look like trees walking around.”
Once more Jesus put his hands on the man’s eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.

• Mark 8:22-25

A professor in an engineering class was trying to explain about how some control functions work.  You might not get all the way to a perfect solution, but you could maintain the system within an acceptable range.  But his illustration works beautifully for those who think close enough is good enough or for those who are uncomfortable finishing anything.  They might say, “I helped,” but the unfinished pieces are left for someone who can finish the work.

In my temperament watching, the latter is often a case of perceiving versus judging.  “Judging” is a misnomer.  The Judging person takes little time in gathering information and then makes a decision and is never satisfied until the job is completed.  The Perceiving person can always find more information that must be analyzed to make sure we have the best solution, but they get frantic near the end of the project.  They do not wish to complete the task.  If they complete the task and then find more information that might change their mind about the approach, they might see that their solution was not the best one.

But the Perceiving person never reaches the finish line.

Now, for the professor’s analogy.  A turtle is crossing the road.  Each hour, he can go from where he is to halfway between that point and the opposite side of the road.  In one hour, he has crossed to the road’s center stripe.  Another hour later, he has crossed half of the remaining width of the road.  Another hour gone, he is just a quarter of the road’s width to go.  But days and days later, he is still going by halves.  Even if he has an inch left, for the next hour, he can only go a half inch, then a quarter inch, then an eighth of an inch.

For a control system, you can consider yourself there, but for almost everything else, you never made it.  There is satisfaction reaching the finish line.  There is grief and misery when the traffic is heavy and the turtle gets run over by a truck because he was stuck going half way each hour.

Look at the Scriptures above, an eclectic bunch, I must admit.  Moses finished the construction of the Tabernacle.  The Sabbath rest of the Promised Land was completed in the seventy years the remnant was in exile.  God destroys the house of those swearing falsely in God’s name.  Ezekiel’s vision was completely covered in eyes, not halfway.  Jesus completely healed people.  The Mark Scripture shows that one instance, where Jesus had to do His thing twice, but He hung around until it was complete.

But right in the midst of all those completeness things, there are the Israelites that did NOT complete the removal of the Canaanites.  And that caused them great anguish for the rest of the time they remained in the Promised Land.  They let the wrong folks stay, and they worshipped the wrong gods.

I like to finish things.  I get irritated when folks walk away from a job half completed.  It did not work well for the Israelites.  And most employers will not put up with half the job left unfinished.

I remember one young engineer who got within a week or two of his deadline, and my boss pulled me and one other “finisher” off our jobs that were making money for the company to help the young guy finish his job.  What he did was high quality, but he never budgeted his time, and near the finish line, he was usually about half done.

Jesus completely healed people, and if Jesus’ death of the cross only washed away half our sins, we’d all be bound for Hell.  It is a good thing to get the work finished.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.