Hi, all! Just a thought.

November is about gone. The holiday season is upon us. Temperatures are cooling off. The trees are changing colors and shedding their leaves. The days are shorter, and of course, the nights are longer. The end of the year is very quickly approaching.

This lone rose bloom popped out to say “hello” on our front walk today. My parents’ azaleas are in full bloom again. Friends of ours are still harvesting eggplants from their garden. It seems as if nature is running behind this year.

You have experienced some difficulties this year that can’t even seem to compare with previous years. Your aches hurt more. Your days are drawing shorter as well. And yet, because you are a Christian with the Holy Spirit alive and well within you, you can still bud, blossom, and bloom wherever He places you.

God’s timing is not on the same schedule as ours. (Be thankful for that fact.) God’s timing is perfect, guided by His wisdom and plans for our lives.

We pray day-in and day-out for those family members and friends who need to know the Lord. We lift up their names to Him time and time again. But since we haven’t seen any results yet, we assume He hasn’t heard our cries, and He isn’t listening. Why do you think He allows us to spend days, weeks, even years praying the same prayers? Perhaps He’s waiting for us to change our prayer.

Perhaps, just perhaps, the very person for whom we pray would see and hear the voice of the Lord if we were the ones speaking to them. Perhaps they would see His loving kindness and forgiveness if only we offered our own first. Perhaps they would come to know the Lord on a personal level if only we attempted to show them how human, how faulty, how failed we are. We need to be real. I can pray and pray for my friend to see Jesus. But if I don’t represent Jesus and look and act and talk like Him, my friend may never see Jesus in me — or he may see a corrupted version of Jesus because of me.

It takes so many of us a very long time to come to know Jesus. Some don’t bloom until they near the final chapters of their days here. But here’s the thing. None of us are guaranteed another chapter. Our chapters may not have another page. We must shine for Jesus now while there is time! We must bloom and represent the Lord while others are watching.  

You say, but I’m not a great witness, and I’ll never be good at it. Why not start now? Better to bloom late than not at all.

Just a thought. ’Til later.

Brad Campbell can be reached at mastah.pastah@yahoo.com.