MORE SAID THAN DONE

It’s been said so often that we often overlook its truth. That truth is that after all is said and done, there’s a lot more said than done. In almost any endeavor more gets said about the process and during the process than gets done. We all talk a good fight, as it were; but when it comes to actually putting our words, even strong words, into action, we tend to fall back a little if not a lot.

This is true in all walks of life, in all parts of life. All of us are good, sometimes very good, at talking about something, about what should be done, about how it should be done, about who should do it, how quickly it needs to be done. Yet all too often not much seems to get done except a lot of talking. The church is certainly not immune to this fact of life.

I suspect that vestry meetings and congregational meetings and planning meetings are classic examples of a lot more getting said than what actually is accomplished from all that talk. If we expended only half the energy and half the effort we use in talking about a project as in doing it, we would grow by leaps and bounds.

Perhaps all this is another way of saying that talk is cheap, because talk certainly doesn’t cost us anything. But it is not as simple as that. Before we do anything, especially anything of importance, we certainly should talk about it. We should get opinions pro and con and in-between. We should talk and think and plan. And then, depending on the importance of what has to be done, think and talk and plan even more.

In the end, however, we should do something that reflects the length of time used in discussing the project. Of course, often it does. If we spend very little time thinking and talking about something that needs to be done, the result can be slipshod or worse. If we spend the correct amount of time, the result can be exactly what we hoped for. The fact that we often do not do what we’ve talked about or that the end result falls far short of our hopes and expectations is why it is so true that after all is said and done there’s a lot more said than done.

The whole of the scripture is a good example. A whole lot is said in the bible about what we should do as believers, as Christians, as professed followers of Jesus. But after reading it all, after reflecting on what Jesus said and did and about what we should do to live out our faith in him, we tend to come up short.

In the end and throughout it all, what is really important and what scripture is saying to each one of us is very simple. We have heard the word. We know what it says. We know what is expected of us. We need to quit talking about what we should do. We need to quit making excuses why we cannot do or have not done what we should and just do it, live as we know we should. Given human nature that is not easy to do.