I can still remember the moment back at Auburn. I was a Junior, but had had a life altering moment recently that was resetting my vision for my life. Gone was the empty pursuit of money through being a lawyer and instead was a sense of a calling to a life as a spokesperson for God.
Boy, was I ready to go. All through the next quarter, I was chomping at the bit to get into action. So, I started praying about how to do that, and while I did act in service for God in a variety of ways including witnessing door-to-door and teaching a Bible study for my fraternity brothers, those acts didn’t seem good enough.
No, I wanted more. And in that feeling of wanting more, I grew restless and somewhat agitated at what I perceived as not being useful. It was at this moment that God gave me a clear epiphany.
I was so focused on the task ahead, and the enormity of it as I saw it, that I was missing taking care of the task at hand. In other words, I was becoming unable to actually doing my current work as I got lost in wanting to do more things.
This was the first time that I understood the need for making sure that I just keep myself focused on doing the current task. This idea of doing what is right in front of you helped me not miss the life going on around me. It also allowed me to get away from such a future focus that I end up quitting on the task, on the dream.
Life is full of moments when what is ahead of us looms so large that we just feel like we can’t go on. We end up talking ourselves out of taking any action at all because the road seems too rough, too long, too impossible. The reality, however, is that action often leads to more clear next steps. W. H. Murray, a Scottish mountain climber was where I first read about Goethe’s ideas from Faust. Murray wrote “I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets: “whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.”
In the movie The Return of the King we can see a wonderful depiction of this idea in the journey of the hobbits, Frodo and Sam. Sam has recently rescued Frodo from one of the evil fortresses and they now must make their way towards Mt. Doom in the middle of Mordor, the evil land of the great enemy Sauron. As they start forward, it becomes apparent that this will not be an easy journey. Take a look:
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Did you see it? Clearly Frodo can only see the difficulty of the task—the host of Mordor lies between them and the mountain. Sam, however, decides the only thing they can do is “let’s just make it down the hill for starters.”
Sam, of course, didn’t know that while they were working through Mordor, Aragorn and the other leaders of the “good guys” were going to risk it all by bringing an attack to the gates of Mordor. They didn’t know that such a threat of attack would convince Sauron to move his army away from the plain where Frodo needed to walk. And, you don’t know either what will transpire during the time you complete the task immediately before you.
Many times over the years since my Junior year at Auburn, I have talked to people seeking God’s will for their lives. Or, I’ve counseled others trying to figure out a way through tough times. Part of the advice is the same as what I learned myself—don’t look so far down the road that you get stuck, unable to move forward or appreciate where you are right now.
Put your mind to simply accomplishing the task that you know right now. For a student, it is passing the next assessment so you can pass the class. For a businessperson, it is accomplishing the work task currently assigned to you. For a salesman, it is just getting the current customer happy, meeting their needs and in turn, making the sale that you need.
That’s it. Just that simple.
“Let’s just make it down the hill for starters.”