Meditations from Zion

Truly, whenever a door opens, it does seem that obstacles come flying across and even through the opening. Too often, when this happens to me, I find myself closing the door, fearful of potential attack and worse, for me, failure. A clear view of the way through does not necessarily mean it’s the right door.

I Corinthians 16:8-10
But I will stay on at Ephesus until Pentecost, because a great door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many who oppose me.

There’s a Bible story about this situation [Numbers 13-21-30]: Moses sent a group of men to spy out the land of Canaan. When they got there, they found a beautiful land, “flowing with milk and honey.” But along with the verdant land, there were fortified cities and even giants. It all seemed too daunting to the scouts except for Caleb, who believed the opportunity was from God and therefore, worth the cost.

Opposition in the face of opportunity may also mean there is a sacrifice to attaining the goal. Our culture has adopted the “quick fix” way of doing things. If it doesn’t come easily, it’s not worth doing.

I have seen students leave college within one semester because it was so much more difficult they they expected. There was an initial goal but the demands were greater than their desire to overcome the challenges.

I remember when I was first getting into the theater business in Chicago back in the seventies. There weren’t as many professional and semi-professional theaters back then as there are now. As a result, most actors would venture into the modeling or acting in commercials or trade shows (in addition to waiting tables, of course). This process includes presenting oneself to an agency with a head shots and resumes and a hope that they might like you well enough to send you on an audition. The audition: that’s the opportunity.

But every audition would have hundreds of other starving, good-looking, perfect-for-the-part actors and actresses. If a “newbie” didn’t get a job from one or two of those auditions, the agency lost interest. They wanted instant success and verification that the “product” (actor) was a viable commodity.

How do you fight that kind of opposition? Intellectually, I always knew the answer: practice and perseverance. But emotionally, I couldn’t handle the disappointments, the losses, the failures. I didn’t look or sound like the “All-American” girl. Instead of leveraging who I was, I kept trying to be someone I wasn’t. I actually gave in to the opposition.

Opposition builds strength and like fire, separates the dross from the pure gold. It’s a good thing.

God help me accept opposition and to stand firm in its face, to learn what I must learn and then to forge ahead.