THE LAST SECONDS OF THREE YEARS

I sat on my keyboard box and held my phone, watching it count down. I was misty-eyed again. The numbers swam through the seconds. A minute and a half to go. 90 seconds left, out of... three years.

It was the interval at choir and everyone else had gone through for tea and biscuits while I sat there, ticking away.

I hadn't thought about it until recently, well, not in any great depth anyway. I didn't even tell anyone at the time that it had happened; I just held it in my heart, watching and waiting, hoping and well, sort of failing.

I can't tell you what it was. I can only say that three years ago, at 8:35pm on the 21st of April, an international speaker told me he believed God would do something specific for me within three years.* It hasn't happened. At 8:34pm last night I was sitting on my keyboard case, watching a clock tick away to zero in a cold church hall.

I don't want to get into the theology of it, who was right, who was wrong. Some things really are 'too lofty for me to attain' and I am alright about that.

In fact, the only reason I'm mentioning it at all is because of what happened next. For something extraordinary took place, almost the very moment the last second ticked over from a one to a zero.

Nope, no last minute miracle. I didn't see an angel or hear a heavenly voice or anything. There was no sky-writing or deus ex machina whisper from above. The extraordinary thing that happened, took place in me, and it was this: I actually felt okay.

I sighed, slipped my phone into my pocket and made a decision. A curious relief swept over me, as though one difficult season had ended and a brand-new, uncharted one had begun.

I knew in an instant that I needed to be single-mindedly devoted to doing the thing I'm designed to do, and right then, in the empty hall at the interval of a normal choir practice, three whole years of distraction and disappointment evaporated from my mind completely. I mean it, completely. That particular feeling has popped out of existence. And it's awesome.

"Alright Matt?" asked Robert, poking his head round the door, "Ready for a cuppa?"

I smiled, stood up and headed for the door.

"Absolutely," I said, "Absolutely."



*You can probably work out what it is.