Well, maybe exactly a day over 44. Yesterday was my 45th. Promise gave me a new backyard propane barbecue, then a surprise birthday barbecue at one of our member’s houses. Well, Karen lined all that up. What a wife! And I got about a hundred Happy Birthday’s online. Fun, huh?
I just had a flashback to Billy Crystal riding a horse in City Slickers, and finally pipes up, “You know, it makes you think…” and his friends start laughing because they had a bet on how soon he’d start talking about mortality. (See the movie, they had just buried their trail-cook.)
I’m not going to wax eloquent here, just make the point that at 45, I really did have plans to be much further along than I am today. I had hopes and dreams just like anybody else.
Do you know what happens when you cook a spicy sauce for a while? One word for that is called, “reduction.” The water evaporates more and more, and the spices get sharper and sharper. If you had hot spices in the mix, they get hotter. If you had sweet spices in the mix, they get sweeter. But there is LESS quantity in the pan.
I genuinely hope that all this simmering, all those reductions, subtractions, hot hot hot days, and the lessening is paying off. The Apostle Paul wrote that he counts everything he gained in this world as loss to the bigger picture. Now don’t get me wrong: I know we have needs here in this world. If I don’t pay my mortgage, taxes, electric bill, they tend to get insistent. On the other hand, maybe what Paul meant for me is to focus on the main thing.
Now we’re back to City Clickers. One Thing, the trail boss said. I’m okay with it being a few things, but maybe the point is just like what Paul said. Do what you’re supposed to do, what you’re created to do, and do it with all your might. Anything that distracts you from that is a loss.
I’m 45. I think I’ll act like it today. Tomorrow….?
Pastor,
I think that puts you in some pretty good company. A survey of Scriptures reveals that those God used greatly were often prepared for those exploits with times of solitude, quietness and obscurity.
How old was Moses when God finally plucked the once-Egyptian prince turned shepherd out of obscurity? 80! David anointed as king of Israel as a teen, writing psalms in obscurity later in life. Joseph, Elijah, John the Baptist…. You get the point.
Lets turn to Paul, he was in his 30s on the Road to Damascus. Galatians 1:18 tells us that Paul returned from Arabia 3 years later, Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Peter and stayed with him fifteen days. We next see Paul fourteen years later as he and Barnabas travel to Jerusalem before Paul’s first missionary trip; Galatians 2:1 Fourteen years later I went up again to Jerusalem, this time with Barnabas. I took Titus along also.
Pastor, I believe that all good takes time to develop; whether it’s the sauce that you mentioned or its God’s good plan for us. Paul spent 17 years waiting after having an encounter of the 1st kind with the resurrected Lord. Seventeen years, he must have been in his 50’s, what was God doing with Paul all that time as he was preparing him for the greatest journey ever?
My prayer for you, is that you feel ‘its paying off’; that you believe ‘its paying off’. I guess standing with Moses and the like is really difficult sometimes. Then again, their faith and accomplishments for God stand the course of time.