The Farmville herald. (Farmville, Va.) 1957-current, 1962-09-07
Start and Finish
Lesson for September 9, 1862


Lesson for September 9, 1862
The two parts or stages of
any job, or Of any enterprise,
which are the hardest, are start
ing and finishing. It is more diff
ficult to set a great liner on her
way, harder to bring it through
the harbor traffic at the end of
the voyage, than to handle the
ship on open water in mid-voy-
age. 1t is harder for a student
to get himself organized and get
to work. than it is to keep going
once he has started. And it is
harder to bring that term paper
together as it ought to be fin
ished up, than it was to write
on and on. What were the criti-
cal moments in the historic
space flight of Col. John Glenn?
Getting off the pad and into or
bit, and re-entering the atmos-
phere, and being picked up by
a ship, were much trickier and
dangerous than roaring through
space at 1900 miles an hour.
The Blueprint's Getting Yellow
Once there was church that
decided to build new sanctu-
airy. They employed an archi-
tect, who drew up plans. and
had blueprints made. Then the
church officers began to be
afraid they didn't have quite
enough money, so they put off
starting and kept on put
ting it off for years. Nobody had
a bad conscience about it, be-
cause they had started, hadn't
they? But finally it dawned on
a new preacher there that the
blueprints were actually lost.
And when after quite a search
he found them, they had begun
to look yellow. Not only that,
but the town had changed so
much that the old blueprints
were out Of date. Something
like that happened in Jerusalem
long ago when the second Tenn
pie was started. It was 20 years
between the. time the founda-
tons were finished, ard the
final work on the building. In
deed if it had not been for those
persistent prophets, Haggai and
Zechariah. who knows when the
Temple would have been fin
ished?
These prophets were an in
teresting contras t. Zechariah
was a dreamer of dreams, a
seer of visions; much of his
prophecy is obscure to this day.
Haggai was no mystic, every
word of his prophecy can be
plainly understood. But prosaic
as Haggai was, and fanciful as
Zechariah was, they united on
one point: The Temple must be
F l N I S H E D. Starting is not
enough.
Things Don't Finish Themselves
A mistake that lazy people
make is to think that by some
kind of magic. things will finish
themselves. Who has not known
the amateur gardener who in
springtime was full of enthusi-
asm. but whose garden by mid
summer looked like the prize
weed-bed that it was? Every
school knows about the teen-age
'drop-outs." the boys and girls
who can't take the time or the
trouble to finish high school and
so all their lives are under the
handicap of not having even a
high school diploma. Many a
woman has a bureau drawer
filled with things she started
but didn't finish ~ pieces Of
sewing, maybe a pile of I'M
letters, photographs she
meant to put in her album but
stuck in here till they're all
curled and mixed up. Teachers
OF language know too well the
student who starts easily enough
and expects the going to be
easier and easier once he has
passed the first weeks lessons
. and when it doesn't turn
out that way, he gives up and
gives out.
A Thing Unfinished
A thing unfinished is that way
either because it couldn't pos
sibly be finished no matter what
or because although it could
have been finished not a soul
was willing to work hard enough
to get the job done. If a thing
S lays unfinished because it
couldn't be helped, maybe it is
a sign of lack of foresight on
somebody's part. There is such
a thing as starting too soon.
Jesus told a parable about a
man who started a house when
he did not have and could not
get money to finish it. One
such house stood in a village