Opportunity Knocks

Have you ever wished you could be two places at once? I have. In fact, I find myself wishing that fairly often. A few weeks ago I was trying to decide whether to go away for the weekend with my husband and son #3 or to stay home for the weekend with son #1. (Son #2 had other weekend plans.) I was pretty torn. I really did want to be both places, and I kept going back and forth in my mind, finding it difficult to make a decision. What made the difference for me was remembering something I had read more than a year before in Bob Goff’s book, Everybody Always. Bob said that “some opportunities come with expiration dates.” I grabbed hold of that at the time I read it, and it inspired me to stop waiting until I had everything caught up and together and to start writing. 

The phrase had popped up again when I impulsively stopped at Suter’s produce stand on their last day of business and came home with 15 dozen ears of corn. I explained to my startled husband that this was an opportunity with an expiration date. If we wanted corn in the freezer, we needed to make time and act.

 
And then it hit me! The answer to the dilemma of what to do with my weekend. Son #1 is a junior in high school. Spending time with him is definitely an opportunity with an expiration date. When I looked at it from that perspective, the decision was clear and I felt confident.

 
As I was seeing things as “opportunities”, and I noticed them cropping up all around. Because I stayed in town that weekend, I had the opportunity to connect with a family that had recently moved here from Guatemala, welcome them and assist their 8th grader with getting started in school. I knew of them from Anteneh, a Bluffton University student from Ethiopia who I had had the opportunity to meet several years ago at a fundraiser we were having after a trip to Ethiopia. That trip was quite the opportunity, and I had almost missed it because I thought I was too busy and couldn’t leave my job and family to go.

 
God gives us so many opportunities. He wants to use us to live His love, to touch people. Unfortunately, sometimes we get so caught up in the demands of our days, work and stuff management and keeping up appearances, that we let the expiring opportunities slip by.

 
The Apostle Paul had some advice that applies here, “Be very careful, then, how you live-not as unwise, but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore, do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.” Ephesians 5:15-17

 
We need to live each day with our eyes open for God-given opportunities. We need to choose what is important over what feels urgent. Could I even suggest that we be praying for opportunities? Paul had this prayer request, “At the same time pray for us as well that God will open to us a door for the word, that we may declare the mystery of Christ…” Colossians 4:3.

Another thought that has helped me over the years when I have tried to sort out how to best spend my time, is a saying of Pastor Jim’s. “People before projects.” People matter. And frankly, all people have expiration dates.

 
God promises that what we invest into people will reap a reward. “So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up. So then, whenever we have opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith.” Galatians 6:9-10

 
Some opportunities come with expiration dates.

 
People before projects.

 
Join me in looking for the best way to spend the opportunity called today.

God, You amaze me with how You weave stories together and place people in just the right places at just the right times to carry out Your work. Thank you for the opportunities You have given us, and for the ones You will be giving. Help us to see them and make the most of each one. Give us Your perspective as we live each day.  I re-pray these words for myself and everyone who reads this:

“And this is my prayer that (our) love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help (us) determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ (we) may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.”
Philippians 1:9-11

-Leah