The Eleventh Hour

The eleventh hour. Typically this is the last possible moment you have available to accomplish a goal or task. As a natural born procrastinator, I have spent most of my life frantically working in the eleventh hour. I recently had an eleventh hour hunting experience that taught me a lesson about my relationship with Christ.

One area of my life in the last three years I have not procrastinated in is bow hunting. I am usually so psyched for the season to begin every September that, according to my hunting buddies, I get started too early. This year was no exception, however, my eagerness did not create an early opportunity to shoot a nice buck. I hunted five to ten days a month for three straight months without getting the opportunity to shoot a buck.

Like most things in my life, I found myself hunting on the last day of the season. That night I sat for three hours while the temperature dropped and the wind blew at me so hard and cold I was sure it was trying to knock me out of my tree stand. Finally, at the time of day when I could barely see my sight pins, the buck I had seen three weeks earlier (the buck I had wanted to shoot all year) walked within ten yards of my stand. As I pulled my bow to full draw he stopped in perfect position for a deadly shot. This was my time. This was what I had waited for, practiced for and rehearsed in my mind all year for. The eleventh hour; the hunter gets his reward for a long hard year of hunting. This was my time.

I settled my sights as best I could, aimed and fired. As soon as I let the arrow go I watched the buck’s reaction. I was hoping he would trot 40 yards start to get dizzy and fall over lifeless. When I saw him trot off 40 yards, stop and try to figure out what in the world just happened, I got excited. Then, he walked calmly out of my life. I had blown it! I had the opportunity I was hoping for. The opportunity most hunters dream of. An opportunity for redemption. An opportunity to prove I have what it takes in the heat of the moment. When everything was resting on me to get things done, I had failed.

After a few days of being able to reflect on what went wrong I realized that this moment was much like the lives of most of the men I know, myself included. We are always looking for that moment to be the hero. We want to come through in the clutch. We want the people in our lives to know they can count on us to come through for them; that we are prepared to make an impact.

The teaching moment for me sounded like this: Most guys don’t succeed due to a lack of preparation for that moment.  It is true! Think about the times when you have succeeded in the heat of the moment: a job interview, a big sales pitch, that walk off home run in your softball tournament. You spent a lot of time practicing, rehearsing and preparing for that moment. The question becomes why don’t we prepare for everyday moments like we would for those big moments? 

If I’m honest, I feel like most of my everyday life is made up of little eleventh hour moments: moments with my wife, moments with my kids and even moments with my co-workers. Those little moments when I have been put in the perfect situation to come through for someone else. I can speak to someone’s heart or act out the love of Jesus. At the time, these moments don’t always seem all that significant, but I have no idea how significant my response can actually be. These little everyday moments may be the opportunity to impact the lives of people around me, and, sadly, most of the time I blow it!

I have found that the only way to prepare for these everyday moments in my life is to spend time preparing for them with God. The only way I know how to react to my children the way Jesus would is to spend time with my heavenly father. The only way to know what Jesus would say to my wife in a critical heart moment is to spend time with Him. Spending time with Jesus to prepare myself for life’s moments is the only way I can prepare to come through in the clutch of everyday life. I hope and pray that you, too, will see that our success in the clutch, the big or little moment, is dependent on how well we prepare. Our preparation for life’s moments only comes from spending time with the one who was perfect in the clutch, Jesus Christ. I know this year I am going to be spending more time preparing for those moments with Jesus. (And more time preparing for that buck next hunting season.)