Already Going Ahead

"…your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you." - Matthew 6:6 NIV

Have we ever noticed how much of a day gets spent watching? Watching where things are moving, where the openings might be, where the good things tend to come from. It is a natural way to move through any day. But what if the things that matter most have a way of arriving from somewhere else entirely? Jesus points to a Father who works in the unseen and rewards what no one else noticed. Could He already be at work somewhere we have not yet arrived?

Consider a man named Jacob, who had traveled far from home to find family he had never met. He stopped at a well and asked shepherds if they knew his uncle Laban. While he was still mid-conversation, Rachel, Laban's daughter, came over the hill with her father's sheep. He walked to the stone, rolled it away, and watered Laban's sheep, not his own. He stopped what he was doing and took care of someone else's need, not knowing his whole life was about to change. Sometimes the moment that looks like interruption is the very place the future opens.

Several women who had followed Jesus to the cross came to tend his body, not expecting anything but grief. Origen, a third century Christian scholar, discerned in that moment an echo of something God had done before. Not the same stone, but the same kind of moment, God's hand rolling away what had been blocking the way to life. At the well, what was released was water. At the tomb, what was released was the Author of life itself.

Without knowing it, the women who came that morning were walking into the same kind of story. Scripture quietly reminds us that "...some have entertained angels without realizing it." (Hebrews 13:2) Here an angel rolls the stone away, sends them forward, and the news changes everything: "...he has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee." (Matthew 28:7) Could that still be how God moves, through people and moments that are not recognized until later? What is needed may already be on its way through the most ordinary of arrivals.

King David sang it well: "Look to the Lord and his strength; seek his face always." (1 Chronicles 16:11) Not anxious scanning of the horizon, but a steady turning toward God. Paul, an early follower of Jesus who once opposed Him and later carried His message across the Roman world, lived that same turning. Even during two years under guard in Rome, he kept proclaiming "...the kingdom of God, the news that Jesus was alive, with all boldness and without hindrance." (Acts 28:31) He could not choose his circumstances, only his posture, staying turned toward the One who is already turned toward us. And that was enough.

The book of Hebrews extends an invitation for exactly that kind of posture: "...approach God's throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us." (Hebrews 4:16) Chrysostom, an early church teacher, caught something in that wording. The word used is not might receive, but will in fact receive, the difference between hoping for welcome and knowing the door is already open.

We do not have to arrange what God is already arranging. The invitation is simpler than we think. Keep serving what is in front of us. Stay turned toward the One who is already turned toward us. At the well, the stone is rolled away and water flows. At the tomb, the stone is rolled away and Jesus steps into the morning, alive. At God's throne, mercy is already waiting, the stone removed, the door already standing open, hands already extended. He has gone ahead, and what He is preparing is already held for us.

Prayer

Lord, there is so much we cannot see from where we stand. Help us keep serving what is in front of us. Teach us to trust what You are already doing ahead of us. Amen.