The other day we missed the window of opportunity and it created a whole new scenario for us for the next five hours.

We actually had two chances to make it through a winter window before our travel plans were severely hindered … but we got caught in a winter storm and it wasn’t even winter yet. 

The middle of November is not usually snow weather, but we can get some weak, wet flurries that might stick to the grass but not usually to the roads. 

This time it did.

My wife, Lily, and I were leaving the Muskokas after a conference. Though there was snow on the ground, the roads were clear and it hadn’t snowed up north in several days. 

As we drove south to Toronto, and the landscape changed from white to green, I thought how nice it was to have the grass in view again. 

But I was too hasty. 

We stopped at an outlet mall to buy me a pair of shoes, which proved to take longer than we had originally thought. 

That was where we missed our first window. If we had just driven straight home, I think we would have beaten the snow storm all together.

But sometimes you don’t have the foresight you need for the situation.

I remember listening to a pastor talk about visiting an elderly woman in his church, way back in the 50’s.  

He said she had fed him coffee and a piece of pie. Unfortunately the pie was rancid and there was no way he could force that pie down his throat. 

He looked around for a way to dispose of the pie without the woman noticing. He was sitting by a window that was open at the time, and he thought it would be the perfect solution.

The pastor waited for the woman to go back into the kitchen and, as soon as she did, he threw the pie out the window. 

Unfortunately, he hadn’t noticed that there was a screen in the window. 

You could say he missed the window on that occasion! … and I would have loved to have heard his explanation. 

The first thing you want to do is make sure there is an open window. 

In our case, we never checked to see if we needed to take the window of opportunity and get out of Dodge to dodge the storm. Instead we decided to meet our daughter for dinner. 

That was the second window we missed. 

If we had have gone straight home after the outlet mall, we might have been mildly delayed by the storm. But when we committed to having dinner with Karlie, there didn’t seem to be any reason not to stay a little longer in Toronto.

Well, we missed the second window and as dinner went on I kept looking outside at the snow that had started falling and thinking, “We really blew it. We should have taken those windows.” 

As a result of missing them, it was one long, slow and treacherous three plus hours drive home.

Here’s the thing: There are many windows in life that we can either take or miss. Three important windows not to miss are: taking Christ up on His gift of salvation – none of us knows when that window for us will close; taking the way out when temptation urges us to sin; and forgiving quickly because it just gets harder to do it later. 

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What window of opportunity do you need to act on right now? Leave your comments below.