The right place at the right time

Last Friday afternoon, I posted these words on Facebook: 

Get thy tools ready, 
God will find the work. 

- Browning 

The mind of man plans his way, 
But the Lord directs his steps. 

- Proverbs 16:9 

Writing, recording, and trying to keep it all in perspective. 

Later that hour, I was clearing my son’s airway as he worked through his umpteenth episode of pneumonia. I shudder to think what would have happened if I had been in the wrong room of the house for just five minutes that day. The square fact presented itself that one’s hour can come anytime, whether well or ill, young or old. 

I had been thinking anyway about last year—how happy I was that we did certain things in 2019, because we can’t do them now in 2020. 

Well, covid or no covid, life still changes. Opportunities change or disappear altogether. Now is the time to live. Now is the day of salvation. Now is the chance to make the most of our opportunities. 

This exhortation can feel like a stressful kick in the pants to do something dramatic. But don’t most of our opportunities arise in the day-to-day of an average life? I want to live in such a way that faithfulness fills the ordinary moments. I want the routines of a normal day to coalesce into a beautiful picture, in which I’m in the right place at the right time for the people in my life. Sometimes the right place is as simple as the same room as my son on a quiet afternoon, so I can hear and see when he needs help.

My failures in this regard have taught me to be grateful, very grateful for the grace of God, whose mercies are new each morning. 

Last week’s fright snapped some things into focus. A busy school year is about to start for our family, calling for a change in workflow. One small change is that I’ll stop taking the extra step of e-mailing the new post every week to subscribers (my site platform has no automated blog alert option yet). I might send a periodic digest instead. If you like reading each week, just visit the website or add the blog to your RSS feed. 

Get thy tools ready, 
God will find the work. 

- Browning 

The mind of man plans his way, 
But the Lord directs his steps. 

- Proverbs 16:9 

Writing, recording, and trying to keep it all in perspective.

 


"The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."

George Eliot, Middlemarch

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