Unlike many people that enjoy an active social life, I tend to spend a lot of time alone. This is largely due to the fact that since I travel for work, I am always in a new place with unfamiliar people. I spend copious amounts of time void of wifi and cable and have found several creative ways to entertain myself. These include the following:
- Window shopping at Barnes & Noble
- Creating yet another recipe with eggs since I accidentally bought 2 dozen
- Doing a 500 piece puzzle from Dollar Tree in which the pieces don’t actually fit together
- Reading, zoning out, flipping back several pages, trying to read again, repeat
- Organizing my silverware drawer (I only have 3 each of forks, spoons, and knives)
- Conversing with my snowman coffee cup
- Quite literally “shaking my groove thang” as I perform my own renditions of songs
In addition to all these glorious activities, I have recently come upon a hidden treasure that I am going to share with all of you. Craigslist>Personals>Missed Connections. You can thank me later. (P.S. Sorry mom, I have been using my cell phone data for this…no regrets)
As you read all of them, there is a broad range of emotion involved in the posts. You may experience desperation, lust, comedy, sadness, or just plain weird. I think anyone who reads through them has to experience the brief thought of “what if there’s one about me” at least once.
While I never expect to find a Craigslist ad about myself and a missed connection, I have thought a lot about the missed connections in our day-to-day lives. The thing about missed connections are that they can be one-way or two-way streets. Sometimes, we glance across the office and notice the spinach wedged between our coworker’s two front teeth before they go into a meeting with the boss and we neglect to say anything while they remain completely oblivious. One-way. Other times, we sit agonizing over what we could’ve, should’ve, and would’ve said to someone while they sit doing the same thing, both never picking up the phone. Two-way.
I think the most dangerous missed connections we experience are the ones we miss with God. I find that there are 2 main factors that contribute to these missed connections:
One-way: We aren’t in tune with His voice and we remain completely oblivious to His calling for our lives
Two-way: We know exactly what He is calling us to do and we choose to ignore it or we say No altogether
Let me re-route for a moment. Have you ever felt compelled to pray for someone as you passed them on the street? A total stranger. I have, and I prayed for them, but I didn’t stop to tell them I was. For every time that has happened to you, someone has also passed you and silently prayed. There are so many prayers spoken over you that you will never know about in this lifetime. God does the majority of His work behind the scenes, much of which we never get to see. You are part of someone’s “behind the scenes” experience, and if you are missing your connections with God, it isn’t only going to affect your relationship with Him. It is going to equally affect theirs.
When this thought first crossed my mind, it terrified me. I thought about all the times I was too afraid of rejection to ask people if I could pray with them. I thought about high school, when I didn’t want to look like that “goody two shoes Christian girl” so I let cuss words slip out freely in order to fit in. I thought about the time God asked me to stop and talk to a homeless woman outside of the grocery store and I didn’t because I was “too busy.” The people I didn’t connect with may not know that their lives were affected, or more accurately not affected, in those moments. They won’t know until judgement day.
When God is showing me my life and the whole world is standing behind me watching, I don’t want to spend the majority of the time wincing and feeling shame for my missed connections. I would rather wince now, live boldly, and connect with those people so that God can work through me than find out that I was the person who was supposed to share the gospel with them and never did because I was scared. Scared isn’t an excuse, and it isn’t going to matter in terms of eternity.
You have control over your missed connections. That control lies in your ability to live boldly. If God is asking you to commit to something or if He is calling you for a specific purpose, He isn’t going to wait around until that perfect moment comes. He is asking you now, and He wants you to respond now.
“Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fishers of men.” And at once they left their nets and followed Him. – Matthew 4:19-20
There was no lag time. They followed Him at once. Don’t wait for the moment to feel right. The enemy has a great way of making every moment feel wrong and dealing you a hand full of excuses. The most powerful tool that Satan has to stop God’s children is the phrase “I’ll do it tomorrow.”
Nothing will hurt as badly as realizing that tomorrow is too late. Do it today. Do it now.
