Making The Most Of Your Opportunities
Have you ever been to a store or post office where customers take a number and wait in a long line until the number is called?
One cold and snowy December day, I journeyed to a local post office carrying a mound of boxes full of Christmas presents for faraway family and friends.
Entering the crowded waiting room, I struggled with my boxes and extended a hand to grab a number from the dispenser near the front door. I pulled number 94.
The sign above the counter, where four busy employees were moving as fast as they could, said the latest number called was 52.
Usually, when I go to the post office, I take something to read with me just in case.
This time I had forgotten, which was too bad, because I probably could have read significant portions of Tolstoy’s mammoth War and Peace.
The milling crowd of customers moved with geologic slowness. After I had been waiting for half an hour, the sign above the counter said “Now Serving: 74.”
By the time the workers were up to the mideighties, I felt like I was in a slow-motion daze. Then the next thing I knew, I looked up and the sign said 96.
After waiting for more than an hour, I had missed my turn.
During my long wait, I wondered if the scene I saw at the post office was anything like what God must deal with on a daily basis as he tries to answer the prayers of millions of people around the world.
But God isn’t like a harried postal worker. God is omnipresent (he is everywhere at once).
God is omniscient (he knows everything including all the prayer requests people make even before they pray). God is omnipotent (he is all-powerful).
Still, Isaiah suggests there are times when we can’t find God, as if like a busy postal worker he had hung up his “Out to lunch” sign.
But God isn’t ever unavailable. Isaiah’s book repeatedly shows that God makes himself available to us, even when we don’t take advantage of the opportunity.
God isn’t out to lunch, but there are plenty of times when we are. Perhaps we become too overwhelmed with the cares of daily life.
Or perhaps we become so busy that we don’t take thirty seconds to listen to God’s still, small voice speaking in our hearts.
God is always here, even if our own attitudes and behavior make him seem a million miles away He is always calling our “number.”
Father, thank you for being there for me. Help me not to take you for granted.