UNFINISHED LABORS

Other men labored, and ye are entered into their labors. JN. 4:38 The last word is the one to emphasize. We hear a good deal about reaping where others have sown: about enjoying the results of other people’s labors.

There is not talk here of reaping, or of results. Others have labored, to be sure: but they have not finished.

The task sometimes outlives the toilers. We have entered into their labors—not their results. The results are still a long way off, and the time to inherit them has not yet come. But the labor is as yet unfinished, and calls to us as it called to those others before us, whose memories and examples we cherish today.

It is a perfectly natural mistake to look upon Memorial Day as something final, marking the end of a task. In a measure, this is true. The task has ended for the toilers of former times, and Memorial Day invites us to think of those toilers with becoming pride and gratitude. But just because they have finished their shift, it does not follow that the task is finished.

Memorial Day speaks in a sterner mood: the task is yet with us. We have entered into the labor. It is hard for us to see life in its continuity. We measure life in terms of person- alities and generations.

But life asks to be measured in terms of eras and mil- lenniums. There is victory in the future: it is for us to understand that we are still working for that victory.