By Pastor Jim Jackson, Richmond Hill Presbyterian Church.

There is a middle point in every task that can prove risky.

The task begins with a beginning. And beginnings are often accompanied with a rush of excitement and anticipation of something worth being completed. Friends and family may well join us in the excitement of seeing a dream take form, even if it is only a hint of what it is to become.

Marriage is an easy example. The bride and her family, the groom and his family, visualize a union that will be beautiful, rewarding and lasting. The engagement of the dream is attended with rounds of parties, purchases, and detail upon detail, say nothing of expenses. It’s like a dream beginning to emerge from the hidden parts of the human phenomenon.

All of this is accompanied by pledges to God and each other—“ unto death do us part.”

But soon the newly-weds have to deal with the reality that the honeymoon does not last forever. Career challenges, housing, budgeting, and children all come, filling the days with the need to reaffirm, almost daily, what was promised at the grand beginning.

Suddenly we are in the middle, a vulnerable place in life’s journey. Some couples affirm their original commitment with what is commonly called a “re-affirmation of marriage;” I cannot help remember what one church member, a deacon, once told me: “Preacher, I ain’t doing that.

I meant it the first time.”

But unfortunately re-commitment is not the case in every union. The dream is drained for lack of nourishment, kinda like what happens to the Colorado River. It evaporates some place in the desert, the desert that challenges promises made at the grand beginning. The apparent cause may not be the real cause. We are inclined to speak of this as a mid-life crisis.

Jesus knew all about the risks of the middle. He even told a parable to warn of the danger.

“For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient for finish t? Lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation (the beginning), and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him,…” In this case, Jesus was warning all of us of the danger of not confirming daily what is required of every believer.

Follow the celebration with reaffirmation, lest we make a mockery of initial pledges. Just remember it all ends with a party: reference the Prodigal Son. He made a mess of the middle, yet it didn’t end there—“I will arise and go to my father…”