Mountain Sheep

On a trip with my parents 4-5 years ago, I woke up in the back seat to the fact that we were preparing to stop. You know that feeling when you are riding in a vehicle and the droning hum of the road, the constant rhythm of the engine sing you to sleep. Then it all stops and suddenly you wake up. This is what I experienced as I sat in the back seat laying down, looking out through the window at the bare mountain in front of me. In my dreariness I began to scan the crest of the hill in front of me for any sign of a mountain sheep, known to wander throughout the region we were in. I thought to myself, if I focus hard enough and strain my eyes, moving them slowly across the horizon, I might catch a glimpse of one or two of these magnificent animals. You see as a child we used to pull off the road on the way to our town lake next to a massive cliff face. We’d wait there for a good while to just catch a glimpse of any mountain goat moving around along the face of the precipice. I was certain that if I focused hard enough I might just see something this time. I usually didn’t work that hard to see them, but this time would be different. As I continued to peer, striving to see what I planned to see, I suddenly hear the loud honk of cars streaming past the gas station where we’d stopped. I could hear some of them slowing down immediately and sounding their horns as if to say “Get out of my way”. I shot up from my seat and scrambled out of the vehicle to see for myself what had caused such a fuss. There standing right in front of me waltzing down the road were three massive mountain sheep. They just moved as they liked down the pavement while cars maneuvered around them, honked and sped off. Some stopped to look and admire, others impatiently careened around them. They were there for only a moment and then disappeared off the edge of the road never to be seen again. I was dumbfounded! God spoke into my heart, “What you work so hard to see and accomplish off in the distance, I have placed right behind you, up close and without your striving efforts to do so.” I have been sensing lately that God is showing me and others opportunities that he wants us to take advantage of. My first response is then to prepare myself so that I can go and do this thing and be completely ready for it. I am seeing that, though that may be the right way in some circumstances, many times God isn’t interested in us getting ready but would rather us just step into the action, the obedience, the calling without getting our “ducks in a row”. Sometimes it seems, our steps of faith don’t need as much preparation as we think they do, they just need obedience, a willingness to step out, go for it and be prepared to not always be prepared.