I walked into a church one Sunday while I was in New York, and on this particular day the church was welcoming to the pulpit a young pastor, maybe in his 30s, visiting that day to tell his story and ask for prayer for all that was before him.

“One year ago,” he said with a thick Russian accent, “I was living on my parents’ couch in their apartment in Moscow, going nowhere, with no direction, getting average grades in some college courses I was taking, and I was an atheist. If somebody would have told me then that today, just 12 months later, I’d be the senior pastor of a large Russian, Presbyterian church in Brooklyn, USA, do you think I would have believed them?”

This young man had just experienced his own personal parting of the red sea. Like Moses, he never saw it coming.

I sat there windblown by his statement. This young man had just experienced his own personal parting of the red sea. Like Moses, he never saw it coming.

I had been feeling a little stagnant in my life, and suddenly I felt so full of hope, as if a million unseen possibilities were everywhere. 

It made me think of Joseph. My guess is that while laying forgotten in a pit, that he would have never imagined that he, an Israelite, would become the second most powerful man in all of Egypt—and in effect, the world—just behind Pharaoh. Could his mind have ever conceived such a thing?

One of the great things about giving our lives to God is that we can absolutely hold out the hope that he can change our course at any moment; things that we could never imagine could be in a plan on God’s desk right now, getting the final touches.

Are you stuck in a rut? Do you sometimes wonder if this life could possibly be the one God chose for you? In the blink of an eye, when you least expect it, God can begin the process of making your life look nothing like it does today. In fact, it might have already begun. Perhaps that is how we should live our lives. Always, with high-levels of blessed anticipation of God’s creative intervention.

I thank God for this Christian life. It is a life of endless possibilities.