Part-Way People

If we were to make an inventory of the things that people start and prematurely stop, it would no doubt add up to an appallingly long list. There are so many once-promising projects that have been abandoned—like roads that start to go somewhere, but fade out before they arrive anywhere. One reason is lack of solid plan and purpose in the first place; and another is failure to follow through. The first fresh enthusiasm for a new thing so often fails when the newness gives way to routine duty and drudgery. Sometimes, of course, there are real reasons why people can’t follow through—misfortunes, illness, miscalculation, and unforeseen circumstances. And sometimes when people have set out on a wrong road, they shouldn’t follow through. When a mistake has been made, it is better to stop than stubbornly persist on a wrong road. But after taking into account all the cases where projects once started should be set aside, it is still tragically true that one of the most frequent factors of failure is the failure to follow through: To start too many things and not stay with them; to fail to meet commitments; to be only partly dependable; to be a “part-way” person—a person that can almost be counted upon, but not quite completely. With a “part-way” person we always have to worry and wonder if this is the time he will fail to find it convenient to do what he has agreed to do or to go where he has agreed to go. In the ultimate outcome, there is much difference in the importance of position that can be entrusted to the person who follows through as compared with the unpredictable, undependable, “part-way” person who starts many fine things and finishes few. Being where one should be when he should be there, doing what one should do when he should do it, seeing a good purpose to its completion are richly rewarding qualities of character. And surely when we stand before Him who is the Judge of us all, and by whom our performance will be appraised, there will be a much different measure meted out to him who endures to the end than to him who fails to follow through.