Preparation: Can't Get There Without it

Preparation: Can’t Get There Without it

It seems that each day and each week God chooses to impress upon me various aspects of the Christian journey that are easy for me to forget or lay aside. The vital concept and reality He has chosen now is “preparation.”
Preparation is the necessary step of a process leading to fulfillment and a goal achieved or an end result desired. It is easy for us to think that preparation time is wasted time. Let me share with you some recent experiences.
First, I am grateful beyond expression for the academic preparation demanded of nurses and doctors before they are licensed to practice. Myrtle, my mother in law, is still in the CCU at Methodist Medical Center as I write this. The machines, the beeping noises, the blinking numbers, the IV lines and ventilator all testify to specific preparation by the medical staff that was taken seriously.
Secondly, I am in the process of building a gazebo in my back yard, getting ready for a pond tour where the public gets to come and see your yard, landscaping and pond/water feature. With fascination and awe I have watched God and my wife, Nancy, cooperate to create a beautiful back yard that needs to be on the front of Southern Living magazine! The preparation of plants for this years growth and the attendant landscaping has taken three years. The preparation of the lumber for my gazebo is a careful, painstaking task, but necessary if I want the structure to be presentable and not an embarrassment.
Last of all, I have seen the personal preparation that God has utilized in the lives of so many people so they can be effective in ministering to others out of the context of their own hurts, disappointments, rejections, pains, etc. Only a cancer patient knows the reality of another cancer patient. Only a diabetic knows the reality of another diabetic. God’s desire is that we remain open to His working in our lives in those areas where we have been humbled. Out of our own thorns in the flesh, we like Paul, have learned that God’s grace is sufficient.
So, preparation comes in the form of training, patience, painstaking sacrifice, and personal thorns. Without all of this we could not be prepared to enter ultimately into God’s presence forever. Why do we always resist what is most needful?
My dear travelers, think of each day as preparation for being in God’s presence forever. May God bless you and make his face to shine upon you.
In Christian love, Curtis