TETELESTAI -- Devotional for December 31, from "Good Seeds"

NOTE TO MY READERS: Today ends this one year project. It has been a challenge and a joy for me. Karen has endured the role of a "writer's widow" as I have spent an average of two hours every day of the year, mostly in the evenings, sometimes late into the wee hours, on this project. I will now take the files to my publisher, Lady Bug Press and very soon, I trust, GOOD SEEDS will be available in hard copy form. For those interested in purchasing the book for yourself or as a gift, contact me at papasteve11@gmail.com, or at skmoore62@yahoo.com. Karen and I are leaving for Japan in February, to serve as a co-pastor of International Chapel in Kyoto. We will return in July to serve at Sugarloaf Camp, and then we'll see if God sends us back to Japan or not. Wherever I'm serving and living, I plan to be writing. My next project is to complete my Christian novel, SECOND WIND.

God bless you as you walk and talk with him, one day at a time, in 2010. Maybe you'd like to take GOOD SEEDS along with you on that journey. Steve Moore.

And He said to me, “It is done. I AM the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of water of life without cost. He who overcomes shall inherit these things, and I will be his God and he will be My son.”(Revelation 21:6-7)

It takes three English words to translate this one word from the Greek New Testament: “It is finished!” This was the last of the “Seven Last Words” of Christ, spoken just before “He bowed his head, and gave up the ghost” (John 19:30). Is this not also what He will say at the end of time, as prophesied in the last chapter of the Bible: “It is done”? When the apostle Paul came to the end of his life of witness to the world concerning the person and work of Christ, he said a similar thing: “I have fought the good fight; I have finished the course; I have kept the faith” (II Timothy 4:7). There’s something to say about sticking to a job until it is done. Of course the world is full of hard-working people, who create and fabricate and dedicated their lives to competent production and service. But how much of mankind’s blood, sweat and tears are poured out on projects that serve no more than the present? Indeed, how many of the clever people invest their competence only in the service of evil? “He is a really good burglar,” someone says. What does this mean? Simply that this fellow’s skills at thievery are highly developed, and thus far he has gotten away with…a lot of merchandise that isn’t his. James writes, ”When lust has conceived, it brings forth sin; and sin, when it is finished, brings forth death” (1:15). Paul warns, “Brethren, in evil be babes, but in your thinking be mature” (I Corinthians 14:20). How many professing Christians are experts in the ways and the wonders of this fallen world, in its science and technology, in its music and movies, in its heroes of sports and screen, while remaining mere apprentices in the things of God? It is good to be “good at” something, to be sure, but it is crucial to choose carefully your specialty, that which will occupy your life and define your legacy. Is it something that honors God, serves others, and lasts past today, maybe even on into eternity? “Do not be weary in well doing,” wrote Paul in Galatians 6:9, but there’s no point in doing well what we should not be doing at all, right? If we continue in work that is God ordained and Spirit empowered, we can be confident that wherever we are in that process when God calls us home we will have finished our course. And now, Lord, as we round out the year, let our thoughts be drawn back to You – You who are the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the Author and Finisher of our faith – the Satisfier of our thirst. Tetelestai! Your work is finished! But we press on. Even so, Maranatha! – Come quickly, Lord Jesus!