Take Another Look

Recently I spent quality time with a friend in a coffess shop.

That’s odd for me primarily because I don’t drink coffee. Apparently coffee shops offer more than coffee. Although at the prices offered, I am not in a rush to return to a coffee shop. In any case, this friend was the reason for spending time in the coffee shop. I’ve known him for well over a decade and more importantly he has a good idea of me.

What makes him a good frined isn’t just about him taking me to have exorbitantly priced drinks in coffee shops. What makes him a good frined is how he has taken charge of his life and made much of it. A married man with two beautiful daughters, he is self-employed and works incredibly hard to provide for his family and set them an example of what a diligent, honourable and caring man does. Not that he would recognise those descriptions. He perceives himself as someone who can be somewhat awkward and discomfitting at times. That works for him – literally – as the success in his business shows time after time.

In any case, this time with my good friend was great. It was great because we got to talk about how things were with us and it’s really fascinating hearing me from someone else’s perspective. It’s fascinating because it challenges me to consider certain things that I accepted to be and look at them again. Look at them from a different perspective. Give it another look. In doing so there were things that I didn’t notice or appreciate before.

One of the key things was to discover that there is no rush in fulfilling what is there to be fulfilled. There is no rush because as long as we are committed to the path of living – living as life should be lived with full intentionality – there is always the fullness of time in which that which is to be fulfilled will be fulfilled.

My friend is a living example of that. He didn’t get the grades when he was at school and was written off as another one of those no-hopers. He had every chance to succumb to all of that in his life. That he didn’t, I saw as another example of the grace of God. That he should reach a place where he made a choice to learn something he was passionate about and from there, despite being written off at school, he was able to do a course at university emerging triumphantly with a degree and the resolve to get his own career set up.

He did not reach his goal as early as others did. He did not get there in as straightforward a manner as some did. Yet he reached a place that a lot of people in life I know never reach – a state where they love what they do for a living and live for who they love in life. He got there eventually and he’s not resting there, but he’s enjoying being there.

It got me to look again on certain things. Might be worth having a look at certain things yourself, too.

(Photo by Mari Helin on Unsplash)

For His Name’s Sake

Shalom

C. L. J. Dryden