70 Years and Reflecting

As one who is approaching seventy years later this month, I find myself doing more than my share of reflection about things that are behind me.  It is not that I live in the past.  Instead, there seems to be more days in the rear view mirror than I can see out ahead of me.  And so, while I consciously seek to live with an attentiveness to the present, I am guilty of peering into that rear view mirror from time to time and thinking about what I see.  Maybe it has to do with getting older, or, maybe it just has to do with being human.

 

Lately, I have found myself thinking about my high school English classes and my teacher, Mrs. Evans.  At the time learning about words, sentence structure, and writing was just a discipline required to get the sought after diploma.  Only later in life have I realized I was getting tools for my trade.  My hours in that classroom was not just for learning how to work with words, but a time of preparation for a life I had not yet planned to enter.  God had a bigger view than just a boy passing English classes.  He was preparing me for a work I could not yet see.  As I sat there learning, I never imagined myself spending a life time writing words and speaking them from behind a pulpit.

It is that way for all of us.  If we look carefully at what is upon us in the moment, we are likely to see some ways that God has prepared us for the challenge of the hour.  When He calls us to a task, or leads us down a road that measures us beyond measure, we can be assured that somewhere before we could envision what was ahead He was getting us ready.  God never hurries.  Look at the story of Abraham.  Or, think about the years Elijah waited for it to rain.  Nine months is what it took for Mary to have the Son who would be Savior.  This God who does not hurry uses what seems to be the insignificant moments of our life to get us ready for what He knows is ahead.