Reflections for Youth - Unfinished and Focused

My mother used to tease me about not completing tasks when I was little. She joked that I was born two weeks early and "wasn't finished yet." She would say that maybe that was the reason that I didn't always put the cap back on the toothpaste or remember to close the door behind me when I was running outside. 

I am thinking this week about all those things that I haven't finished. We've all been there. Started a project or puzzle or something that we abandon. We get distracted and move on. We see or have something more exciting or interesting to do. Or sometimes we just forget.  

But like most things, there is an opposite to this. Sometimes we can be so focused on something that we can't possibly be distracted and stop to do anything else.  

In this passage from Luke, we see that Jesus is doing both - leaving things unfinished and focusing in his journey to Jerusalem. 

Read  Luke 9:51-62 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem and he sent his messengers into the village of the Samaritans to get ready for his visit.  But the passage says that they didn’t receive him.  When the disciples James and John saw that he couldn’t visit they said

“Jesus - do you want us to command fire come down from heaven and blow them all up?”

And Jesus said “Whaat? I don’t think so—and they went to another village.

And as they were traveling along the road someone said “Jesus I will follow you where ever you go”  and Jesus answered him by saying some kinda confusing things about fox and birds and maybe hinting that the journey of following him would never end.

And then Jesus asks a man he meets along the road to follow him. And the man said yes—but wanted to go home first and take care of the details of his father’s funeral.  But Jesus replies with  one of his most often quoted sayings: “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”  

Nope -  he says, follow me now. 

Another man says he will follow Jesus right after he goes home to take care of some business.

Nope again. Jesus says, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

So there are lots of things that are unfinished in this story.  Jesus was going to visit a village and then doesn’t visit. His disciples wanted revenge, but Jesus doesn't let them. Jesus tells the two others to leave things undone and move forward.  He's leaving things undone. Yet he is focused and can't be distracted as well. He is heading toward Jerusalem and we know how this story ends. 

I think we would all agree that sometimes in the Bible Jesus says and does a lot of things that we don’t understand. But I think that maybe this story is showing us how focused Jesus is and he is not going to let anything distract him from teaching about God and going to Jerusalem.

Maybe the thing that we can learn from Jesus in this story is to keep seeking God, learning about God, and listening for God’s directions.

Now, .... what's that thing that I started that I need to finish?