That One Moment...

Greetings Rocking it Christian Style readers. I have the honour of writing a post for today, and to put it plainly, I feel extremely blessed. My name is Matt, or to go along with the trend of this fine blog, you can call me “M”, just like in James Bond. I feel strangely satisfied by now having something in common with Judi Dench.

I thought I should share something that has been on my mind a lot recently, and that is the fleeting beauty of a moment. Let me explain. It was in September, the 25th if I remember correctly, that my life would be changed forever. I applied to do my honours in industrial psychology. I had to wait a few months to find out if I would be accepted or not. November the 12th was when I heard life changing news. My life would be forever defined by this one single moment. Not because I got accepted to do my honours, but because I didn't get accepted. After my last minute attempts at applying at every other university failed, I realised that for this year perhaps I wasn’t meant to continue with my honours - another road had to be taken. So I applied to study something that initially terrified me...I applied to study teaching.

This made me realise, sometimes God closes every door because He needs you to go through the one you’d rather avoid. Even though God closes the door, He never leaves you alone in the dark without some kind of purpose.

You know how sometimes we have to look retrospectively on our lives in order to pinpoint exactly where our lives changed? This wasn't one of those. I knew soon after that, things were going to change drastically and that I would never be the same, I knew that my life was going to change from how I'd originally imagined it to be. I was, and still am terrified by this. However, I was also, and still am, very okay with that. I no longer had the choice to go back to what was familiar. All this happened in a moment.

This got me thinking on the simple complexity behind a moment. The truth is that we are defined by single, solitary moments in life. These moments all culminate and add up exponentially in order to determine and direct our lives. All it takes is one moment to tell someone you love them. It’s that one moment of weakness that will cause a person to give into temptation. All it takes is one single moment to say goodbye to someone you love. In one moment we find ourselves at a crossroad, unsure of what path to take.

Something about moments, and how they change has always bothered me. C.S. Lewis put it very well, “Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back everything is different.” Yes, it’s hilarious. It’s ridiculous that we are defined by a moment; it’s crazy that we often can’t see those moments until long after they have happened. We often look back and think that if it wasn’t for a particular event, we would never have experienced a very special life changing moment. The build up to that moment may have taken days, weeks, or in my case, months. In some extreme cases it takes years. How unfortunate are we that we succumb to this fact? Yet, how incredibly awesome is that as well? We have the choice to change our lives in a moment.

My point is this: if our lives can be changed by something as simple as a moment, then we shouldn’t waste a single one of those moments feeling sorry for ourselves. We shouldn’t waste a moment not living life. Every moment we aren’t happy we rob ourselves of happiness. I personally believe God puts these life changing moments in our lives for a reason. More often than not these moments test us, and put us on a path to become better people. For me, I have overcome my fear of public speaking, I have met amazing people who have become my friends, as well as deepening the friendships I already had. This year has been a fantastic growing experience, and it started because of one moment.

I don’t know whether God has our destiny planned out for us already, but I do know we all have a purpose. I know that He doesn’t ever let us walk alone on whatever journey we are taking. Life is constant change, we can either run from it, or we can embrace God who will help us through it. By turning to God I found that I have a new calling in life. I’m terrified of not knowing what my purpose may be, and I don’t know if this is where I’ll be forever. This much I do know; no matter what road I take, God will be there. Life is an explosive paradox of randomness, uncertainty and excitement. We can carefully plan our lives as much as we want, and in no way am I saying we shouldn’t be planning our lives. However, we can either be angry because things aren’t going the way we intended, or we can accept that He has something greater planned for us. We don’t always realise that our current plans might be shackles, weighing us down and preventing us from achieving something much greater than what we had originally set out for ourselves. God uses moments like this to take us on a journey. Maybe then it isn’t about destiny, but about a path God wants us to take on a spiritual expedition. In this case, sometimes we just have to let go, and just simply let God.

All it takes is a moment.

Stay awesome everyone.

M