Stepping Out Ahead

My wife exclaimed recently, “I love it when you’re a step ahead of me!” I had done something like cleaning scuff marks off the kitchen floor before she thought to ask if I would. Maybe that’s something like taking the lead in a slow dance. It relates too to what we had just studied about diligence: that it tends to leave things better than they were found, on whatever level. There were three Bible characters, for example, who seemed to be steps ahead of their fellows. Enoch prophesied the second coming of the Messiah long before he had come even the first time. Moses if I recall correctly predicted the whisking away into exile of the children of Israel before they ever entered their promised land. King David and his men ate the priests’ showbread as though they were already stepping ahead into the New Testament reality of the priesthood of all believers. ( Moreover David’s Tabernacle of Worship consisted unthinkably of only one compartment!) And the prophet Isaiah foresaw the return of many of these same Israelites from exile before their exile ever occurred. We can enjoy and rejoice in the fact that our God is so many steps ahead of us, putting things into a grander perpective for us and granting us the sense of security and deep well-being that goes with it. It cuts the menacing giants in our land down to a more manageable bitesize mass. And how do you eat an elephant as a friend likes to say? That’s right; one bite at a time.