A friend recently called me and invited me to go skydiving with him. Yes, you read that right — skydiving. According to my friend, jumping out of a perfectly good airplane was on his bucket list. He wanted me to come with him.
I declined. Jumping out of an airplane isn’t on my bucket list. In fact, I didn’t know what was on my bucket list. I didn’t know I was supposed to have one. Do you have one?
Bucket lists were made famous in a movie starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholas. Both men had terminal diagnoses and had a list of things they wanted to do before they died or kicked the bucket. Thus, a bucket list.
In the Bible, there’s a different understanding of bucket lists. Instead of a list of things we want to get done before we die, there is a calling for which you’ve been preparing your whole life. Think about it. Abraham was seventy-five years old when God called him to leave home and with his wife Sarah, begin an entirely new nation of people. Moses was eighty when God called him to rescue the Israelites from Egyptian slavery. Simeon and Anna were trusted with recognizing Jesus as the Messiah when Joseph and Mary brought Him to the Temple for the first time.
In each case, these individuals had been going through stuff that would be needed and useful in their calling. For instance, Moses tended Jethro’s sheep in the same mountains and deserts where he would one day lead the tribes of Israel. Simeon had spent most of his life in prayer. He knew God so well; Simeon would be able to recognize the face of the Father in the face of Jesus. In each case, it had taken these people their entire lives to prepare for what God was calling them to do.
You see, it’s not something we have to get done before we die, but with all that God has taught us, what has God uniquely prepared us to do throughout our lives to be ultimately used in one unique moment? The apostle Paul was a student of one of the premier rabbis of his day. After his conversion, he spent three years studying the Scriptures trying to understand the full reality of what the Damascus Road experience meant. He was a Roman citizen. He understood the Roman Empire and all its structure. Everything in Paul’s life had made him ready to take the gospel throughout the Roman Empire.
This leads us to an interesting thought. What has God been preparing us to do right now? If we are to look back over our lives and add up all of our experiences, where do they point? If you were to put a pin in every significant moment of your life, where does the line take you? If you add up everything in your life, what has God been doing in you to get you ready for the next great adventure of your life? The Bible never talks about retirement. What the Bible does tell us about is one more adventure all of our other adventures have prepared us for.
A bucket list means things are coming to an end. A calling means things are just beginning.
And our God is always beginning. Look around. Where is the place that only God can change? What is the problem only God can solve? Who is the person that everyone says is too far gone?
Maybe God is showing you these things because they are the moments He’s been preparing you for. There’s a wisdom that comes with years. There’s a perspective only time will provide.
There is a boldness and confidence only a lifetime of answered prayers can fuel. Wouldn’t that be just like God? To hold the best for last?
To say to you and me, “This is the moment for which you were born…” Even if we were born a lot of years ago.
