Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow… Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” (James 4:13-15, NIV)
Looks like I’ll be eating turkey tomorrow. That’s what we do here in the States when it comes time to celebrate Thanksgiving. Tradition, you know.
Blessing is more clearly seen removed from the literal moments or hours in which it happens.Of course, as James directed, I hold tomorrows and traditions with a loose hand. My schedules and God’s plans don’t always coincide, and I need to be ready to make way for the one who deals in kairos time, where the clock stops ticking for the sake of true focus and attention. Think compelling conversations that turn lunch into a three-hour affair, or enrapturing reads that blow our sleep habits out of the water. Think chance meetings and divine appointments. You might even say there is a reason we take professional competitors off the clock in the final holes of a tournament—the circumstances override the unrelenting stopwatch.
Two years ago this week, I went to the mirror and noticed something I should have seen months sooner. My Adam’s apple was pushed far off its natural center line. What followed were weeks and months of doctor’s appointments and scans and hospitalization and surgery and recovery. This isn’t the kind of stuff you journal. At least I don’t. Only in the end do you look back and say, “Wow, that sure consumed some time!”
So tomorrow I plan to do what many of you plan as well. If the Lord allows, we will sit down with family and friends and speak not of the things God has yet to do. Instead we will look back on what he has done. The eyes of our memory won’t be ticking off days or watching the clock go ’round, but they will review “times” of blessing and thank God for them.
The beauty in this is that blessing is more clearly seen removed from the literal moments or hours in which it happens. It is strange sometimes how hard I have to think now to recollect the pain and sickness that came with chemotherapy, radiation, and major surgery. But the deeper lessons? These I cannot shake. They will remain with me as earmarks of the plans God had for me. And they fill my thanksgiving.
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Jeff Hopper
November 22, 2017
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The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.