Be Prepared

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You are to eat it quickly, for you are to be dressed for travel, with your sandals on your feet and your walking stick in your hand. It is the Passover Festival to honor me, the Lord.

Exodus 12:11

Yesterday, I experienced serendipity.

According to one definition, serendipity is “an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident.” Serendipity is an occurrence that you neither planned nor expected, yet which confirms a truth, validates an idea, or supports a viewpoint that you hold or may be considering. Serendipity is rare, but real. In last week’s blog (you can read it here in case you missed it) I explored the significance of operating with the expectation that God will open doors for you. I don’t often revisit the ideas that I share in previous posts, but then the serendipitous moment arrived, and I felt compelled to do so. So consider this, Doors, Part 2.

So…..

Yesterday morning as I was walking into the gym, I noticed a woman behind me. My father always required my two brothers and I to open doors whenever any woman headed toward one. The practice is so ingrained that I automatically opened the door for the woman behind me. She was about 10 feet away, but was engrossed in her phone. When she looked up and saw that the door was open, she hesitated, almost dropped her phone, and mumbled what sounded like a thank you.. She was so disoriented when she reached the front desk that she asked me to go ahead of her. She moved away from the desk toward the wall next to the cafe, and then offered an apology to the receptionist. “I’m so sorry, she embarrassingly whispered. This kind gentlemen opened the door for me, but I wasn’t expecting it, so I wasn’t ready. Please give me a moment.” I laughed to myself, walked toward the locker room and last I saw she was still digging in her bag looking for her ID to check in.

The entire episode may have lasted 7 minutes. But I haven’t been able to stop thinking about her comments. Why was this serendipitous you ask? Because it helped me see the power of expecting doors to open. The woman at the gym only lost a little bit of time, but she lost the time she did because she wasn’t expecting the door to be open And whenever we don’t expect doors to open, we can not only potentially lose time, but opportunities, relationships, and energy. When you don’t expect doors to open, you spend a lot of time figuring out how to work around barriers that may not exist, deal with enemies, that may never materialize, and fight through opposition that may never appear. And perhaps what’s worse: you have to move to the sidelines and let other people behind you go in the door before you.

Far too many of us engage in what Brene Brown calls “disaster planning,” which is the often overwhelming dread that we have of negative things occurring in our lives. As. a result, we develop scenarios to anticipate how we will respond if bad things happen.

But when is the last time you developed a scenario to anticipate how you will respond if good things happen?

What will you do if things work out?

What will you do if things go your way?

What will you do if you get help instead of opposition?

What will you do if you get to the door that you thought would be closed and discover it’s open?

What if he pops the question and tells you that working is now optional?

What if you get the promotion?

What if you find out you don’t have cancer?

What happens if your daughter gets a scholarship?

What if your son designs a game that Amazon decides to buy?

What if your job lets you retire early?

I want you to begin thinking, praying, and planning for how you are going to respond when the door opens. Don’t spend so much time trying to figure out how to get through the door, or who might be standing in front of the door that you fail to prepare for what you are going to do once you are on the other side.

You can’t wait until opportunity presents itself to figure out what to do with it. The scripture from Exodus at the beginning of this blog captures this idea perfectly. It is part of the instructions that God gave Moses to give to the children of Israel on the evening of their deliverance from 400 years of slavery in Egypt. God told them that something extraordinary was going to happen and they needed to be prepared for it. When the moment arrives (and it will arrive), when opportunity presents itself (and it will present itself, and when the door swings open (and it will swing open), be fully dressed and ready to go. By then, it will be too late to get ready. You gotta be ready.

Are you ready to walk through the door that God is going to open?