Jumping the gun
“I wait for the Lord, my soul waits; and in his word I put my hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than the watchmen for the morning, more than the watchmen for the morning.”*
Last fall, we
purchased a seed growing kit along with some packets of vegetable seeds,
thinking we could start them indoors and then plant them outside early in the
spring. Looking back on the experiment, it was just too soon to sprout the
seeds.
Only a few of the
Italian green beans survived and produced beans. The peas didn’t do well at
all; and out of the dozens of miniscule brussel sprout seeds planted together
in little pods, only three managed to grow into healthy plants. Brussel sprouts
are just now forming along the sides of the stem in between the leaves of one
of the large plants which outgrew its tiny pod planter long ago.
I won’t try
growing vegetables indoors this year, but will wait for the right time, after
the snow has melted! The idea of getting a jumpstart reminds me of competitive
swimming years ago. Al and I both competed on our high school swim teams—his
was in Michigan and mine in California. In our day, no one wore goggles or
high-tech swim suits.
Swimmers lined up on starting blocks at the
edge of the pool same as in modern times; however, they bent over, gripping the
metal edges of the blocks with their toes and holding their arms in front of
their bodies, leaning out over the water. When the starter’s gun went off, they
would swing their arms in a circle and then do a flat dive into the pool
If someone lost his
or her balance, a false start was credited to that person. Two false starts
meant disqualification from the race. In one particular race, I needed a good
start and wanted to get off the block as soon as the starter’s gun sounded.
My dad happened to
be the starter for that meet. When I saw his arm raise the starter’s gun above
his head, I began leaning out farther and farther. But before it was fired, I
lost my balance and did a front flip off the block into the water!
Dad looked up into
the stands and announced in a loud voice, “That’s my girl!” How embarrassing!
Needless to say, I gripped the block more tightly with my toes and waited for him
to fire the gun the next time around.
Nowadays, swimmers
crouch down on the starting block with one foot in front of the other, similar
to the start used in some track events and hold onto the front edge of it with
their hands. Very seldom is there a false start. That would have helped me!
Come to think of
it, I still have that tendency to jump the gun in certain situations, as
demonstrated at the ophthalmologist’s office last week when taking a Field of Vision
test used to check peripheral vision. Sitting in front of the machine, with my
chin cradled in a holder and one eye patched, my job was to focus the other eye
on a yellow light in the center of the screen.
Whenever a pinpoint of light occurred on the screen, I had to press a
clicker.
This test lasted
only for a few minutes, before switching to the other eye. However, it was complicated by steam forming over the
glass screen from my facemask, which made the test more difficult. Sometimes
there were long pauses when I couldn’t see the tiny points of light at all. That made me jumpy, so I started pressing the
clicker before I was really sure.
“Woops, sorry,” I
said after a few premature clicks, “Jumped the gun!” In spite of that, the
results showed that my vision hadn’t changed significantly. Praise the Lord!
Can you imagine
the Lord’s reaction when He is working to answer a particular prayer of ours,
but rather than waiting for the answer to come, we take things into our own
hands and jump ahead of him? How disappointing! Especially since our hastiness
often creates problems.
On the other hand,
when we wait patiently for Him to work, trusting in His promises and in His
faithfulness, how pleased He must be! Jesus will never let us down. We can be
sure of that!
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