it will remain unfinished

My house is on the market. I'm pretty confident God has a buyer. And with two open houses coming up maybe that buyer is about to walk through the door. My family and I will be moving to Belgium later this summer, and the unfinished deck on the back of my house will remain unfinished...by me. If the new buyer would like to roof it, screen it, paint it, or replace it, that's up to him/her. But I will not be finishing it.

I thought about changing the name of this blog. The unfinished deck is not going to be my inspiration for much longer. But I think I'll keep it. There are very few things we get to finish in life. I think the bowl of Life cereal I eat in the morning would be the exception not the norm. We are raising our kids the best we can, but someday they will all leave our home and our care and someone else will be the main influence in their lives. We spent nine years serving university students at South Dakota State University with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, but now we'll move on, and in a few years very few students will remember who we are. And of course we put a lot of work into this house that was once abandoned (and rather stinky) but has become very close to the house we imagined. But that roofed and screened deck on the back of the house never caught up with our imagination.

Life lesson: Like the new owner of the house can choose to remodel or improve, God, the "owner" of all things, our family, our ministry, our lives, can do what he wants. And for that reason I'll keep the title "The Unfinished Deck." Maybe I'll be reminded to depend on God for all the things that matter.