Outdoor Truths

Gary Miller

   I’ve suddenly become obsessed with one certain gobbler. It’s pretty smart and I have had my moments where I have been pretty dumb. Regardless, it’s still alive and has now become my number one priority until the season ends. I can take you to the area that it will roost in. I know it well. I actually think I missed this bird on opening day which makes it that much more wary of anything it cannot see. But since then, I have set up my son for an opportunity, but we set up too close. I have set up another young man, trying to get him a shot, but the bird flew down and went the other way. And I have also had other opportunities as well and have come up short. My latest try was my most calculated. I purposely got there very early, called very little, and waited on what I thought was ample time. I could hear it gobble and thought if I moved down the hill a little bit, my chances would be better. Wrong. It actually stopped gobbling only to show up behind me. A few minutes later it walked right in front of the area I had previously left. My impatience was once again my undoing.        
   As I think about this bird and the times of my encounters, it would be easy to say this tom is a wise old bird, and it may be. But in reality I have made it look wiser than it is. It should have met its demise many times but I have unwittingly spared its life by giving in to one of the hardest temptations that we all fight – the temptation to think we’ve waited long enough. There is no doubt that more bad decisions have been made by falling to this lie than any other. We think we have waited long enough in our career, in our marriage, in our finances, and in many other areas that bring us pain. And as a result of this self-imposed deadline, we have missed perhaps the miracle that God has for us. If there was one truth that I could tattoo on each of our minds it would be this: “Waiting is God’s tool for bringing about great things in our life.” And waiting until it is “too late” is exactly the place He wants us to get. If it is too late for anything humanly possible, only God will get the glory when something great happens. Are you in a place right now where you have come to your end? Have you drawn a line in the sand and declared that line to be the deadline. Has some situation imposed on you caused you to proclaim the end is near? Then sit still and whatever you do, don’t move. That quietness that you sense is not God’s inactivity. It is His deliberate movement in your life to know He is at work doing what only He can do.

Gary Miller
gary@outdoortruths.org