cu@thefinishline#4

Part 4 – ‘Finishing Well Requires Some D.I.Y.’

“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” (Paul in 2 Timothy 4 verse 7)

“When writing the story of your life, don’t let anyone else hold the pen.”

Building My Workshop – From the Finish line to the Start Line and Back

I love a good DIY project. I love collecting materials to recycle for such projects. My poor long-suffering wife. She has, at times, endured growing piles of timber, sheets of ply, iron roofing etc. She dreads the annual inorganic collection, as apparently I bring home more than we put out.

Under our deck, on the water side of the house, I decided to build myself a workshop. So one day I sat on a stool, on the dirt, under the deck, with a nice cup of coffee and began to envisage my workshop. I thought about what I would create and repair in it. What tools and power tools would go in it. How to make it water tight beneath an exposed deck. What materials were required to complete the job. I am one of those people who sees and thinks in pictures. I could see it taking shape in my mind, and could see the finished creation, the finish line. From there I worked my way back, all in my head, deconstructing the workshop until I arrived at the first stage – start digging to the right level, make a water tight ceiling etc. A few months later, all the gathered materials, including a lead-lined kauri window, were all in place and the DIY projects began.

Why do I tell this story? It was another reminder to me of the practical nature of creating ‘finish lines’ in life. Dreaming of what the end result might possibly look like, deconstructing from that image to get back to a start line, and building from there.

We can and will, spend time, energy, and money, to plan and build a workshop, build a home, create a business, plan a holiday, an overseas trip. We can envisage all manner of exciting events and make a plan to reach a finish line, but how many of us apply such principles and practices to building a life? Developing our character and relationships, building a marriage, a family, all deserve that same time, energy, and money.

“Your Mission, Should You Choose to Accept It…”

Having such a clear sense of mission, of being, empowers and guides one’s life.

One of the primary fears people have is – “Having lived a meaningless life” (From ‘Repacking Your Bags’ by Richard Leider & David Shapiro).

“Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter.” (Francis Chan)

If we have no clear vision of what the finish line could look like, we run life’s race to the beat of everyone else’s drum. Others will end up holding the pen and writing the script of one’s life.

“The world will ask you who you are, and if you don’t know, the world will tell you.” (Carl Jung)

Values and Purpose Challenge What We Hold On To and Let Go Of

There is a simple, but profound little parable that paints a picture of how many people go through life without a sense of what is important –

“The story is told of a trader who so grossly overloaded his wagon that his horses could not pull it. He thought of lightening the load by taking off some of the merchandise, but decided against doing so – because he felt every item was indispensable to his career. Still, something had to go; so he took the wheels off his wagon!”

We sometimes use an interesting phrase when we see people, or ourselves for that matter, crash in life – ‘the wheels came off.’ Sometimes, as this little parable reveals, we end up removing the wheels because we prefer to carry ‘stuff’ that makes up for no clear sense of being.

Francis Schaeffer put it well in a message called ‘Ash Heap Lives’ when he said, “We all tend to live ‘ash heap’ lives; we spend most of our time and money on things that will end up in the city dump…and in the western world most people have only two values – personal peace and affluence.”

Character is revealed in what we place value on, for what we value receives our time and energy. The ability of character to go the distance requires knowing what we value most. Having determined the values and priorities that will fuel our life and enable us to make right choices so we know what to say ‘yes’ to and equally what to say ‘no’ to. One of the greatest currencies in life we have been given is the gift of time and how we invest it (see posts on ‘Wrestling With Time’)

Finishing Well Requires a ‘Stop Doing List’ Alongside Our ‘to do list’

“Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of the non-essentials.” (Lin Yutang)

I don’t know about you, but I am a never-ending list person. I have a what I refer to as my ‘master to do list’, with everything listed under headings – tasks, projects, people (to call, message, meet up with), writing, study…’.

One learns that you cannot keep adding to the ‘to do list’ without creating a ‘stop doing list.’ In other words, what do I need to stop doing in order to achieve what really matters.

An old Egyptian proverbs puts it well – “The marksman hits the target partly by pulling, partly by letting go.”

I love to read, in order to learn. I was not one of those who experienced education academically beyond being asked to leave school when I was sixteen. When raising a family of four children, and pastoring a large, growing church, people would ask me where I found the time to read. You guessed it, I would reply that if I waited to ‘find’ the time, I never would. I chose to make the time. To allocate a certain amount of time, most days, to reading and writing.

Under the pressures of daily life, we can turn to certain pleasures in order to escape the tension and stress.

“When a person can’t find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.” (Frankl)

We tend to refer to it as ‘relaxing’, or ‘chilling out.’ This in todays culture is primarily ‘screen time.’ Whether it is televisions, social media, movies etc.

“…New Zealanders are spending more time online than ever, with 50% of respondents spending four or more hours of their leisure time on the Internet each day…On average New Zealanders spend three hours a day on the internet for personal use. 67% of 18-29 year olds spend four or more hours online in their free time, making them the demographic that is the most wired into the web…The study also revealed that 53% of individuals aged 30-39 spend four or more hours online daily, making them the second-highest demographic in terms of time spent online. day.” (Source: InternetNZ report, March 2025)

This same report revealed that the average person in New Zealand spends 2 hours and five minutes watching television and the same amount of time on the internet, social media. This equates to four hours and ten minutes of screen time, which is twenty-eight hours per week!

Imagine if some of those twenty eight hours of being entertained and distracted, were spent invested in something, or someone, that matters?

“There is a limit to the time assigned to you, and if you don’t use it to free yourself it will be gone and will never return!” (Marcus Aurelius)

Finishing Well It Takes More Than Desire – It Requires Discipline

“Character is the ability to carry out a good resolution long after the excitement of the moment has passed.” (Carett Robert)

The Apostle Paul, using athletic imagery, conveyed his sense of single-minded focus in pursuit of what matters most in his Letter to the Philippians in chapter 3 verse 12 -14 –

12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13 Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

Unless we turn a desire, a vision of a preferred future, into disciplines that keep us from being distracted, we run the risk of living a delusion. It just requires one step at a time.

“I would rather live with the pain of discipline, than with the pain of regret.” (Dr. Barnard)

Recently Pip and I watched an episode of Grand Designs New Zealand. A couple set out to build their dream home on a seemingly impossible piece of steep land, overlooking a beautiful view of creation. What motivated them? The husband had been working in New York on 9/11, right in the heart of that tragedy. As he ran for his life, he later reflected on the suffering and how close he had come.

Instead of that experience paralyzing him, he literally picked up a pen and wrote the story of his life, how he wanted it to finish. He then went about making the necessary changes and paying the price to not only build a dream home, but build a new life.

We don’t need to wait for pain or trauma, we can pick up the pen now and write our ending, come back to the start line and run our race.

“True life is lived when tiny changes occur.” (Leo Tolstoy)