For teachers and students alike, the month of May is often approached with a “just try to get through it” mentality.  (If you’re an 8th grader about to graduate middle school, perhaps you’re just on autopilot trying to coast in for a landing.)  We are all tired, and for good reason.  Hopefully we have “run the race so as to win,” which necessarily means we’re going to be nearly out of breath as we cross the finish line.

But there is a “good tired” and a “bad tired.”  In an actual race, I have experienced that “bad tired” when, after crossing the finish line, I literally thought I was going to die AND not because I had just run the race of my life.  In fact, those types of finishes are often preceded by a painful several miles that either proved to me that I had not properly prepared or that my heart wasn’t really in it.  The collapse across the finish line is just the nail in the coffin.

Then there have been those “good tired” finishes: my body still cries out in pain as I sprint past the time clock, but I am immediately invigorated by a sense of accomplishment and healthy pride because I have indeed run a good race.  Somehow my legs don’t feel like jelly and there is still a bounce in my step.

I also feel “good tired” after a long Saturday of hard manual labor out in the yard.  Every muscle in my body aches, but the pain is almost satisfying–a “good pain,” we might say.  Those are the nights that I sleep more soundly than ever.

But I can feel “bad tired” after a long day at school during which I have been impatient with students, uninspiring in my teaching, and uncharitable with my coworkers.  I come home and the loud voices of my two little girls immediately annoy me.  I want to go stare at a wall or fall asleep at 7 p.m.  But those nights of sleep are not characterized by peace.

You see, good work–work that is pleasing to and dependent upon the Lord, work that is excellent–is tiring, but it leads to a state of restfulness.  Perhaps that is what God was trying to show us in the Genesis story.  God worked.  He said, “It’s good.”  Then He rested.

But work not done well–work that is done not as unto the Lord, work that relies on our own strength–is both tiring and leaves us feeling restless.  I think of Solomon’s words in Ecclesiastes:

“Then I looked on all the works my hands had done, and on the labor in which I had toiled, and indeed all was vanity . . . There was no profit under the sun.”

So how do we finish well?  The words of Jeremiah, quoted in a recent sermon, have been resonating in my bones for the past couple of weeks:

“My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and they have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.”

Does the prophet not sum up the essence of all sin–all bad finishes–in this one sentence?  Not only is the cistern a less preferred source from which to retrieve drinking water (standing water versus flowing water), we can’t even make cisterns that hold water.  As our bishop said to our congregation at a recent church retreat, “We are all leaky buckets.”

When these last few weeks of school get tough for me, my tendency is not necessarily to neglect God altogether.  On the contrary, I often find myself crying out to Him.  But what I have come to realize is this: I’m just crying out for Him to pour water into my broken cistern.

If we are going to finish well, we have to dive into that spring of living water.  We have to expect more from God than water in a leaky bucket.  As C.S. Lewis says, “Our Lord finds our desires not too strong but too weak . . . [We are] like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.”

For me this means I can’t just ask God to pass me a cup of water as I run frenetically towards the finish line.  (Have you ever tried to drink from those little plastic cups as you’re stumbling dizzyingly through that last mile of a poorly run race?)  Also, I can’t go do work “just to get it done,” with the promise of summer vacation my reward.

Rather, I have to begin–each day–by going to where God is, sitting down, and letting Him fill me.  I have to ask boldly and expectantly.  I have to desire His will for that day.  Then I must get up, go do good work, and expect to be simultaneously exhausted and at peace at the end of the day.

May it be so.  Lord, help me.