Everything Already In Place

A couple of winters ago, I continued to run through the cold and ice even though I was not training for any specific race.  I just ran.  And suddenly one morning in the beginning of March, I received an email about a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to race in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, an event taking place in just two weeks.  I had been preparing for something that was not on my radar, something that was organized suddenly, an opportunity for which one was ready or not.  And I was reminded that training never goes wasted.  Or as my grandmother used to say, in regard to playing the piano, “your practice is never for naught.”

Sometimes we know what we are working toward.  Other times we are called to just faithfully work, not knowing what is ahead but assured that God can use what we are doing right now in this place, even that what we would consider menial or meaningless on the surface.  God uses those times to equip, prepare, stretch us for what is to come, even in building our trust in Him for those times when it appears we are treading on a tightrope high above a canyon.

The Olympic athletes this week have demonstrated to us the value in working hard and working toward.  They learned the practice of discipline long before they knew they would be part of the world competition.  Day after day of exercises,  monotonous laps back and forth, long lonely miles when muscles ached from fatigue, vigorously training as if it counted, continually building strength and falling exhausted every night.  Their Olympic dream – often captured as a youngster – is what drove them all those years to prepare for the Olympic team.   And when that rare opportunity to qualify arose, they were ready, skills honed, minds focused, muscles strengthened.  They knew how to nail the event because they had done the same thousands of times before-- over and over again when no one was even looking.

Even now-- in our work, service, loving others and loving God, studying and meditating on His Word, communing with Him—we are being equipped and prepared for that which is to come, those things which even now we cannot comprehend or imagine.  It is not that God is moving things into place, but He has done that already.  His opportunities for you are already prepared, that which is beyond your wildest dreams. 

Get ready.

Live expectantly.

 

What no eye has seen,

nor ear heard,

nor the heart of man conceived,

what God has prepared for those who love Him.

                              1 Corinthians 2.9